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Tulip posted:I will say that the notion of a universal right to rule is not unique to China. Note again: the Catholic Church. Non-Catholics are beyond the Church's reach, but there's no ethnicity or region of the planet that the RCC writes off as outside their jurisdiction. IIRC the Dalai Lama has claimed that if we found alien life, it would be part of his responsibility to shepherd to their spiritual needs to the best of his ability.
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May 15, 2023 04:45
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:If this guy wanted to ask about Chinese perceptions at the time, he should have done it. Instead he seems to have asked this guy if Mongols and Manchus are considered foreigners in a more general sense. This is interesting, so was the great wall seen as an internal barrier, to reduce strife between the various various internal parts of China? My understanding of concepts of nationalism are that they didn't exist in the same way they do now pre the 18th century, and were more rooted in ethnicity, culture, and regions of control than the nation state, but that's admittedly more about the rest of the world and it would be interesting to read about any differences within east Asia.
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May 15, 2023 06:48
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distortion park posted:This is interesting, so was the great wall seen as an internal barrier, to reduce strife between the various various internal parts of China? My understanding of concepts of nationalism are that they didn't exist in the same way they do now pre the 18th century, and were more rooted in ethnicity, culture, and regions of control than the nation state, but that's admittedly more about the rest of the world and it would be interesting to read about any differences within east Asia. I mean this in the nicest way I can because this might nip a problem in the bud : Do you think “Chinese” is a meaningful ethnic group?
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May 15, 2023 07:00
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Xiahou Dun posted:I mean this in the nicest way I can because this might nip a problem in the bud : No, perhaps now you'd call it a cultural group but it seems unlikely to have been the case back then, which is why I posted the original quote - the official was suggesting that it was. Or at least the translation did, I take the point that it could well have been badly translated
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May 15, 2023 07:20
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distortion park posted:This is interesting, so was the great wall seen as an internal barrier, to reduce strife between the various various internal parts of China? My understanding of concepts of nationalism are that they didn't exist in the same way they do now pre the 18th century, and were more rooted in ethnicity, culture, and regions of control than the nation state, but that's admittedly more about the rest of the world and it would be interesting to read about any differences within east Asia. No, they understood that there were independent polities. My read of the passage you photographed is that there is some kind of miscommunication in the exchange, and the writer hasn't gotten across the question they want to ask. The thing about China is that it has never been a nation-state, so the multiple Great Walls that have been built weren't there to serve as the division between two ethnicities or nations or whatever. They were simply military fortifications. To give an example, the most recent Great Wall was built by the Ming dynasty to defend against raiders from Mongolia, but the Ming military was itself composed primarily of ethnic Mongols at the time of construction. Beyond the Great Wall there were Mongols that were tributaries or vassals of China.
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May 15, 2023 08:18
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MikeC posted:Regardless of what the official line may or may not have been, the concept of them vs us (Han Chinese) definitely existed. The word ZhongHua (referring to the symbol 中華 traditional Chinese) would almost certainly not be applied to someone like Genghis Khan or the Mongols or the Manchus. They may belong to a tribuary system to the Emperor but they definitely were not considered 'the same' as the civilized rice eaters of ancient China proper by the people - or at least the ancient writers. To me, clear delineation of who was or was not part of the Chinese identity, especially in relation to foreign invaders who then took up the mantle of Emperor shows that there did indeed exist the concept of "nationality" on some tribal or cultural lines did exist in ancient China. As I said it may not be to the same degree as Western European 'nation-states' but the concept of a group of people being foreign certainly existed in China. And not just China. Concepts of citizenship existed in Greece and Rome well before the modern era. The late bronze age "international" system and its subsequent collapse at the hands of "sea peoples" has preserved writing from Egyptians and Hittites clearly indicating some foreign invaders coming to their shores. They weren't written about like some bros from across the sea. They were made out to be alien and different than those who lived there and from those they associated with. The existence of the concept of foreign-ness in the world doesn't mean that you get to personally fill in the blanks of any given context. Your examples should illustrate this to you. Roman notions of citizenship were fluid in both legal and social reality. In contrast to the Romans, Classical Greeks could barely conceive of other Greeks being citizens of another polis, with the caveat that we don't have much describing how the far-flung colonies like Massilia or Colchis etc. handled things. Whatever conclusion one could draw from such a vague notion would be as inconsistent as the base. Using the same point of comparison (Greeks or Romans), I could conclude that Manchus were guys from the next town over, or maybe Chinese people who just wanted a proper legal status so they could stop Han settlement in Manchuria. Just to be clear, these are completely incorrect descriptions of Manchu-Han relations. Metaphors of home invasion are unhelpfully limited when it comes to polities, and I won't even entertain them. You should start by considering that the Manchu were responsible for Sinicizing themselves, to a major degree before ever actually ruling over any ethnic Han and to an incredible degree afterwards. By 1911 the vast majority of Manchus had given up their language, homes, and culture in place of living like settled and urbanized Chinese. The idea that the Han manipulated or tricked Manchus into doing this is far-fetched, lacking respect for both Manchu agency and their political supremacy. The simple answer is that they did it to themselves because they wanted to be Chinese. ofc there is more to it but calling them foreigners is non-descriptive. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 09:36 on May 15, 2023 |
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May 15, 2023 09:31
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Vahakyla posted:My in-laws, through my wife, who served in the slaveholder's rebellion, with the Confederate Army. I've been diving into some documents in my wife's folders, and this is super rudimentary because there's too many papers to practically sort by myself, so I'll just take one person of focus, the most direct relative. This is some drat good MilHist. Thank you for sharing!
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May 15, 2023 13:28
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MikeC posted:How would you interpret distortion park's post of the paragraph in the book and what he wrote then? it's fairly obvious imo that the paragraph is reflecting the -modern- Chinese political policy towards Mongols and Manchus in the 20-21st century, not what how China saw those groups historically. During both the Yuan and the Qing there were popular resistance groups explicitly predated on the idea that the Mongols/Manchus were foreign invaders. Traditionally being a farmer or at least part of a farming society was seen as essential to being Chinese. Which seem clearly aimed at excluding steppe nomads from being "Chinese"
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May 15, 2023 15:04
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I have completely lost track of what people are arguing about at this point.quote:Traditionally being a farmer or at least part of a farming society was seen as essential to being Chinese. Which seem clearly aimed at excluding steppe nomads from being "Chinese" This seems very weasel worded and not particularly logical. Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:21 on May 15, 2023 |
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May 15, 2023 15:19
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Huh, 130+ new posts, I wonder what's going on, I hope it's notKYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Can we please not do nuking Japan chat it always sucks
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May 15, 2023 15:23
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Fangz posted:I have completely lost track of what people are arguing about at this point. The transmission of the legitimate succession across dynasties, I'm pretty sure. Bonus points if you can justify to whom Chen ceded the mandate and from whom Sui obtained it. Either that or whether Chinggis Khan and Kublai Khan were: both Chinese, neither Chinese, or only Kublai was.
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May 15, 2023 15:25
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The idea that there is a single universally agreed upon definition of what it means to be Chinese that is applicable for thousands of years is utterly absurd.
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May 15, 2023 15:27
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Fangz posted:The idea that there is a single universally agreed upon definition of what it means to be Chinese that is applicable for thousands of years is utterly absurd. It's almost like trying to use a word across languages and all of time without a definition is silly!
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May 15, 2023 15:32
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That said, I'm reminded of the time my history teacher scolded me for writing an essay talking about the battle of Hastings as a battle between the "British" and "French invaders".
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May 15, 2023 15:36
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How much freedom and leeway did the Warsaw Pact nations have over their own military procurement? Obviously they had a lot of second-line equipment provided directly by the Soviets and there are a few items they made themselves, such as the DANA SPG or OT-64 for example. But how much freedom did they have? Would they have been prevented from creating their own series of tanks for example? I know the Polish had some of their own development programs towards the end such as the modernisation programs like the PT-91 Twardy.
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May 15, 2023 16:16
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Cessna posted:Huh, 130+ new posts, I wonder what's going on, I hope it's not It's actually 2000 year old Chinese linguistics this time.
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May 15, 2023 16:36
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zoux posted:It's actually 2000 year old Chinese linguistics this time. No?
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May 15, 2023 16:42
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Well, that's just my impression from scrolling as quickly as possible past them.
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May 15, 2023 16:45
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This discussion is interesting actually I just don't have anything to add
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May 15, 2023 16:57
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The brief aside on the various Chinese language words indicating outsiders is an interesting one to me. First off: the passage that was quoted is absolutely reflecting orthodox historiography in which all non-Han ethnicities that have a significant population in China get to be ethnic minorities (少数民族), which in modern China tends to mean lowered requirements for university entrance (though I think this might have been changed recently), colourful national dress, and depending on ethnicity possibly a love of dancing or propensity to steal ethnically Han men from their wives and keep them from returning by dosing them with poison to which only the ethnic minority girls have the antidote. As mentioned, this predates the PRC but it is still relatively modern. For the older views it’s useful to go back to the various terms used: the core concept appears in the classical period (it gets mentioned by Mencius in the late 4th century BC, for example, quoting older texts) and it is the “Four Yi” (四夷). Yi in this sense is used pretty much the same way the Greeks used “Barbarian”: an outsider who is appreciably different from you and people like you. Rather delightfully, the four Yi are traditionally aligned to the cardinal directions: - In the east, the Yi 夷 (Yep it’s the same character used for the whole group) - In the west, the Rong 戎 - In the south, the Man蛮 - In the north, the Di 狄 They are expressly not Chinese (that is, belonging to the central kingdoms / 中国), but people who we would now consider Chinese like the King of Chu Xiong Liang will later describe themselves using these markers. However, in general the terms have somewhat negative connotations. It’s worst for the poor Di, who get a character with the squiggly left hand bit (the radical) that’s also used for animals like pigs, dogs and elephants. We are also told that the various groups of Yi don’t cook their food and the northern ones sleep in tents and wear animal hides. Yi then goes on to become a kind of generic term for foreigner, carrying the connotation of being the kind of person who doesn’t cook food, dress properly or sleep in a fixed abode. It also shows up in Japan, who create the title 征夷大将軍 (High General who Suppresses the Barbarians) or, as it’s better known in English, Shogun, for their top war leader. Finally, Qing China loses two opium wars in a row against the UK and France and is required among many other things to stop using the term 夷 in formal documents to refer to British people. Modern Chinese people tend to think this is an example of the Brits failing to differentiate between “Yi” and the western concept of a barbarian but tbh I think that’s pretty much exactly how the word was being used at the time because of the historical connotations: it was Qing policy to 以夷治夷 (use the Yi to control the Yi - this is also how “divide and conquer” is often translated into Chinese). Around this point the Qing develop new slur technology and introduce the expression 洋鬼子 (yangguizi), a pejorative that means Western Devil and which remains the most common way to refer to westerners until the 1970s or 80s, and in Cantonese speaking Hong Kong eventually loses the pejorative nature in its contracted form 鬼佬 (Ghost Dude), which remains the normal description for a foreigner.
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May 15, 2023 17:04
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zoux posted:It's actually 2000 year old Chinese linguistics this time. That sort of thing is much more interesting.
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May 15, 2023 17:26
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Flipswitch posted:How much freedom and leeway did the Warsaw Pact nations have over their own military procurement? Obviously they had a lot of second-line equipment provided directly by the Soviets and there are a few items they made themselves, such as the DANA SPG or OT-64 for example. But how much freedom did they have? Tanks are really expensive to develop, especially if you want it to be state of art and not some crappy T-34 copy. They also don't pay themselves back in the same way that manufacture tractors for your farms does. The Eastern Bloc countries weren't exactly swimming in surplus capital so it comes down to could they have turned a profit of it to justify the investment in new Škoda tanks while facing competition from Soviet factories? Or was it better to just make cars, trucks and tractors for your people's needs as well as for export.
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May 15, 2023 17:40
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There were also attempts to rationalize production of various civilian highly engineered capital intensive goods across the communist bloc countries through comecon. The Poles built a ton of cropdusting aircraft for export to other countries, including the USSR. The Czechs built medium horsepower tractors for export to Poland, DDR, etc.
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May 15, 2023 17:54
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Beefeater1980 posted:... and in Cantonese speaking Hong Kong eventually loses the pejorative nature in its contracted form 鬼佬 (Ghost Dude), which remains the normal description for a foreigner. Interesting stuff thanks, although the Cantonese speaking kids at my school definitely used gwai lo perjoratively! I didn't know that was the literal transaction, pretty cool.
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May 15, 2023 18:24
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Things are cusses because of their social context. Quebecois cusses are all, like, parts of a church.
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May 15, 2023 18:35
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Will French-Canadian moms really wash your mouth out with soap for saying "Tabernac!"
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May 15, 2023 18:38
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zoux posted:Will French-Canadian moms really wash your mouth out with soap for saying "Tabernac!" Depending on how you use it, yes. Quebecois French uses a lot of church words as insults or swears as a rebellion against the control the church had in day to day life in Quebec.
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May 15, 2023 18:45
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zoux posted:Will French-Canadian moms really wash your mouth out with soap for saying "Tabernac!" Yes, hello. Welcome to every language the Catholic Church touched. A lot of people think English is really weird because we use "gently caress" as a cuss word.
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May 15, 2023 18:47
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yes, hello. Welcome to every language the Catholic Church touched.
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May 15, 2023 18:50
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I know a lot of spanish swears but none that are specifically church related
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May 15, 2023 18:51
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Nessus posted:Oh is that the reason we're weird. (insert the copypasta about rifling other languages for vocabulary here) Dummy-do negation is the real big one. "John't didn't kiss Mary" WHAT THE gently caress IS THAT DO DOING THERE zoux posted:I know a lot of spanish swears but none that are specifically church related ...you can't think of a single Spanish cuss word that's religious?
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May 15, 2023 18:55
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zoux posted:Will French-Canadian moms really wash your mouth out with soap for saying "Tabernac!" Yes, or a good Kaliss. Older generations will be most upset about the sacrilegious nature of your cursing whereas with younger generations will just be upset about you cursing in general. Xiahou Dun posted:A lot of people think English is really weird because we use "gently caress" as a cuss word. N.b. I should note those two are legacy curses from mainline French.
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May 15, 2023 18:56
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Fangz posted:I have completely lost track of what people are arguing about at this point. So what this goes back to is that a poster in this thread posted an excerpt where a Chinese man makes the claim that the Mongol and Manchu invasions of China were better understood as rebellions rather than foreign invasions. Another poster said this was patently absurd, an interpretation of history that was invented whole cloth by the PRC and lacking any basis in prior Chinese history. A bunch of us who know a few things about Chinese history raised objections, since notably the idea that the Yuan and Qing dynasties were simply subjects of Heaven who were exercising their right to rebel against a corrupted imperial lineage was part of the propaganda of those very dynasties, not an invention of the PRC (and particularly in the case of the Qing, pretty necessary to their victory: they absolutely needed Ming defectors, and while I'm not going to pretend those Ming defectors were all pure idealists, being able to tell yourself "I'm actually supporting the REAL legitimate government" sure as hell helps). I've been focusing on the much older end of things because uh frankly I just like the Mengzi as a source, I think its neat. I think we also haven't gotten into some of the more complex texture of this even yet, which is that while there is obviously a theological argument that the Emperor is the Emperor of All Under Heaven, there's obviously questions about how seriously people took those claims. Like its pretty facially obvious that the Emperor's ability to protect somebody who goes to Japan is extremely limited. But at the same time this isn't that easy of a test, there are areas inside China where government authority waxed and waned over time. Banditry, piracy, minor rebellions are a constant feature of any history of China you read, and part of why Chinese administration proved so durable is that it was generally quite 'light on the ground,' outsourcing many bureaucratic tasks to informal power structures like clan ties and village elders. A lot of flexibility so to speak. Beefeater1980 posted:The brief aside on the various Chinese language words indicating outsiders is an interesting one to me. This was a great post, thank you! I def did think gwai lao was still pejorative lol, probably because I've encountered it most often in martial arts films.
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May 15, 2023 18:57
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Nine of Eight posted:
I wasn't talking about French, but also I think the "in the rear end" is doing some serious work for your latter example.
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May 15, 2023 18:58
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Xiahou Dun posted:Dummy-do negation is the real big one. "John't didn't kiss Mary" WHAT THE gently caress IS THAT DO DOING THERE Like "Tabarnac" is the Quebecois "gently caress!" or "MOTHERFUCK!" is my understanding, and it is just (archaic?) French for 'tabernacle'. I also think calling someone "un vache" is pretty lethal.
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May 15, 2023 18:59
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Xiahou Dun posted:Dummy-do negation is the real big one. "John't didn't kiss Mary" WHAT THE gently caress IS THAT DO DOING THERE No and neither can the Argentinian translator I sit next to.
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May 15, 2023 19:02
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zoux posted:I know a lot of spanish swears but none that are specifically church related ˇMadre de Dios!
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May 15, 2023 19:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:Dummy-do negation is the real big one. "John't didn't kiss Mary" WHAT THE gently caress IS THAT DO DOING THERE Otherwise we'd have to deal with "kissn't'd" and ain't no one got time for that. 
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May 15, 2023 19:09
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:ˇMadre de Dios! I guess, I don't consider that much of a cuss, it's more like if "Iglecias" was just as bad in Spanish as "motherfucker" is in english.
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May 15, 2023 19:09
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Nessus posted:religious, yes; church parts? The tabernacle, the ritual box you keep Communion supplies in? Maybe I'm being the dumb rear end here because I don't understand how this isn't really transparent synecdoche/metonomy? The question of which random thing got picked is boring and not worth going into cause it's just historical accident and some mild functional constraints. The go to really bad cures in my German is just the word "crucifix" said really, really hillbilly. But it's not because Germans like crosses more than taking the Eucharist ; we're just comparing two random rolls of the dice.
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May 15, 2023 19:10
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