ABSTRACT
The late Chinese imperial era comprised two empires, the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644 –1911), which together lasted over five hundred years. These imperial formations were only the last two of a series of dynasties beginning with the first emperor of the Qin dynasty in thethird century BCE. Chinese historians have described a continuous imperial tradition going back even further to prehistoric and mythical times, by producing 26 official histories establishing a continuous lineage of orthodox structures of imperial rule. Modern historians have questioned the adequacy of this stereotyped scheme, but it still persists strongly in Chinese understanding of imperial history.1 The Republic of China wrote a draft history of the Qing dynasty, and in 2002 the government of the People’s Republic of China launched a very large-scale project to write another official history of the Qing. Although the PRC calls itself a nation-state, not an empire, it still relies heavily on the invocation of the imperial legacy.
