Conquest Dynasties

A conquest dynasty in the history of imperial China refers to a dynasty established by non-Han peoples that ruled parts or all of the China proper, such as the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the Manchu Qing dynasty.

Conventional Chinese history mostly uses neat single dates for the beginnings and ends of dynasties, but it should be remembered that most conquest dynasties arrived and fell in protracted and violent wars. For example the Chinese Ming dynasty is normally dated as replacing the conquest Yuan dynasty in 1368, but there was a long revolt against the Yuan, and in the field of Chinese ceramics Jingdezhen porcelain is usually, but not always, described as "Ming" from 1352, when they lost Jingdezhen in the south.

The term "conquest dynasty" was coined by the German-American sinologist Karl August Wittfogel in his 1949 revisionist history of the Liao dynasty (907–1125). He argued that the Liao, as well as the Jin (1115-1234), Yuan (1279–1368), and Qing (1662–1912) dynasties of China were not really "Chinese", and that the ruling families did not fully assimilate into Han Chinese culture. This view contradicts traditional Chinese historiography which regards "border people" such as the Khitans as essential parts of the Chinese people. The "conquest dynasty" idea was warmly received by mostly Japanese scholars such as Otagi Matsuo, who preferred to view these dynasties in the context of a "history of Asia" rather than a "history of China". Alternative views to the "conquest dynasty" from American sinologists include Owen Lattimore's idea of the steppe as a "reservoir", Wolfram Eberhard's concept of a "superstratification" of Chinese society with nomadic peoples, and Mary C. Wright's thesis of sinicization. Among historians, the idea of the Liao and Jin as being foreign or conquest dynasties is much more controversial than the same characterization of the Yuan and the Qing.

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