La SFEMT a le plaisir d’annoncer la tenue, dans le cadre du Cycle de Conférences SFEMT 2024/2025, de la conférence suivante :
Of Intimate Empires and Graceful Constituents –
The Polha Court in Qing Inner Asia (1728-1750)
par Riga Shakya (Heyman Center for the Humanities/EALAC, Columbia University)
le jeudi 15 mai à 18h00 via Zoom (https://shorturl.at/OHyOZ)
Résumé :
Based on my book project in progress, Mirrors of History: The Poetics of Tibetan Kingship in the Time of the Qing Empire, this talk examines the Polha court (1728–1750) established by Polhané Sönam Topgyé (1689–1747) as both a site of governance and a vehicle for negotiating Qing imperial rule in Tibet. This ambitious royal court brought together monastic elites, military officials, and literati-statesmen into a new political order, during a time of unprecedented transformation in China, Tibet, and Inner Asia. This formation was facilitated by imperial grace—a multiethnic discourse of affiliation between the Qing emperor and their subjects—that created new social, physical, and cultural mobility for a rising class of Tibetan elites. While a historically contingent process, imperial grace connected Polhané’s court to Qing efforts to cultivate loyal interlocutors across Inner Asia. Though Polha rule was short-lived, it would influence later Qing expansion and the history of Sino-Tibetan relations. This talk will explore the Polha court as a lens into royal self-fashioning, early modern courts, and state-building and empire.
