<- dork

Okay, so Prof. Alitto set up a meeting with me, Stephen (his grad student), and this guy from MIT, Peter Perdue, who just wrote a book about China/Russia/Mongols and the battle for the central Eurasian arena in the early Qing dynasty and the subsequent integration into a nationalist/mandate historical narrative.
But anyway, I shamefully didn't say anything and just acted like a dumb undergrad. ::sigh::

At least I got to hear some interesting things, though. Maybe I'll email the guy...
Anyway, some thoughts...
- he mentioned in his book that the Qing immediately recontextualized victories as part of inevitable Heaven's Mandate. Did the Qing think of their conquests as expansion or as putting down "internal" dissidents?
- why were some people trade and some people tribute? Did the tribute system really inform their world view?
- The Qing empire's mercantilist attitude and the internal merchants' free trade commercial robustness
- colonialization through trade + settlement vs. military conquest (western vs. Chinese concept of colonialization)
- why not colonize Korea, Ryukyu, Japan? (geography? they're too "civilized"? built in concept from early state formation? no need for resources?)
- see colonization as need to enforce infrastructure? central-controlled infrastructure that then focuses on specific regions while expoiting others, which then falls into regionalization at the end of the Qing, which do/don't have power of trade?