Juul van Eijk is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Area Studies.

More information about Juul Eijk

Research Interests

The Manchus lie at the core of my interest in Qing history. They were a people that invented itself; their identity and their language were amalgams of tradition and absorption, subject to constant change while from the very creation of the Manchu people, their rulers were concerned with the survival of Manchu-ness. In order to accommodate rulership over an ever-expanding polity of peoples, Manchu Khans became the embodiment of multiple traditions of rulership. The Manchu people, language, Khans, in addition to Qing empire-building are my chief interests.

PhD Research

My doctoral research is focused on understanding how the early Khans of the Qing dynasty adapted their views of Tibet from the formation of an alliance to the establishment of imperial hegemony over Tibet. More specifically, my research project departs from a Manchu point of view and employs discourse analysis to examine the shifting views on Tibet and certain Tibetan institutions and social structures. In so doing, I first examine imperial discourse on Tibet during the formative period of Manchu-Tibetan relations. This is then contrasted with the discourse of later periods, where relations are wavering and the Qing adopts an increasingly interventionist stance towards Tibetan affairs. Manchu sources will play a central role here, but are accompanied by Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongolian material. On the basis of the diachronic analysis, I will endeavor to explain the ultimate legitimization process of Qing integration of Tibet into the empire. Here, my research project will strive to reveal the historiographic attempt to overcome the apparent paradox between the Qing's self-presentation as protectors of Tibetan Buddhism and the perpetuation of the priest-patron relationship between the Dalai Lama and the Khan on the one hand, while simultaneously expanding control over Tibetan Buddhist institutions on the other.

Publications

• Juul Eijk, “Mapping in Manchu: The Development of Usage of the Manchu Script and Language on Qing Imperial Mapping Projects,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 52 (2020): 137–68.
• Juul Eijk and Fresco Sam-Sin, “Targets in Shooting,” ed. Fresco Sam-Sin and Peter Dekker, Debtelin: Journal for Manchu in Translation 2 (2018): 72–115.