Ancestral Rites and Political Authority in Late Imperial China

Abstract

In 1742, Jiangxi Governor Chen Hongmou (1696-1771) undertook an experiment to grant lineage headmen (zuzhang and zuzheng) considerable judicial and disciplinary powers over their kinsmen, to be exercised in conjunction with their officiating over the sacrificial rites at the ancestral temple (zongsi). Chen was broadly regarded, both in his day and after, as a model provincial governor and an exemplar of the style of governance known asjingshi (ordering the world, or, more loosely, statecraft), and this action in 1742 seems to have been seen fairly quickly as a touchstone for his overall political approach. In this article, I want to look not only at Chen's initiative itself but also at the creative way his experiment was read by later figures in the Qing statecraft tradition. What I hope this will illuminate is the seductive appeals and practical limitations of the ideology of governance through natural local elites and, still more generally, the enduring tension between family and state in late imperial Chinese history.