• Date: October 8th, Tuesday, 2019 12:30-13:30
• Location: Asia Square (3rd Floor), SNUAC (Bldg. 101)

The Reforms of Banner System in Jilin Province in New Administration of the Late Qing Dynasty (1907~1911)

Speaker: Jiyoung Lee (SNU Asian History)

On October 9th, SNUAC held the second brown bag seminar of 2019 fall semester. This seminar was proceeded by Professor Jung Keun-Sik, director of Northeast Asia Center, and consisted of a presentation by Dr. Jiyoung Lee (Asian History), who had been selected for the 2017 SNUAC Dissertation Writing Fellowship and had successfully published her doctoral dissertation.

The presentation examined the reforms of the banner system in the last 5 years of Qing (1907-1911), when the Eight Banners system which had been a core system of Qing had been abolished and discrimination between the Manchus and the Hans was removed, with a specific case of the Jilin province. Dr. Lee explained the reforms in four areas: reform of government organization, military reform, back-to-the-farm policy, and education policy. She emphasized that the reforms were not successful in terms of actual contents such as the abolition of the Eight Banners and discrimination between the Manchus and the Hans.

After the presentation, there was a discussion in the form of a question-and-answer session between the presenter and Professor Jung Keun-Sik to familiarize the audience with the contents and process of the banner system reform in terms of modern Chinese history, which was soon followed by an interesting and in-depth discussion with various members of the audience. Most audience members agreed that the changes in Chinese dynasties are different from those of Korean dynasties in the sense that the change from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty did not necessarily bring a rupture in the people’s lives, but sustain a certain continuity. This session let many of the audience members to gain a piece of new historical knowledge on how the Qing era differs from the Ming era.