ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to synthesize the tremendously insightful interpretations of the scholars and make use of their extensive collection of epigraphs. It examines how Han Chinese struggled to preserve their ethnic identity while reconciling it with political allegiance to dominant outsiders, whether the conquest Manchu Qing Dynasty at home, or native East Asian kingdoms and European colonial authorities overseas. Resistance was one of many strategies adopted by Chinese elites when faced with disorder and the undesirable specter of alien rule. The Yongli calendar and reign name thus epitomized the consolidation of Chinese across maritime East Asia into a unified political bloc with a coherent proto-nationalist identity centered around the affirmation of Han Chinese ethnic sentiments and rejection of Manchu rule. Eventually, the need for continued access to the Chinese market, along with the mass arrival of immigrants and traders from Qing-held territory, forced the earlier generation of exiles to consciously dilute their irredentist sentiments of the potential for revolutionary action.
