Controlling from Afar: The Daoguang Emperor's Management of the Grand Canal Crisis, 1824-1826 (review)

Abstract

© 1998 by University ofHawai'i Press Reviews 469 political stability" (p. 150), this does not mean that corruption is any way an inevitable concomitant to the realization ofthese goals, especially not measured on the scale by which it seems to flourish in China. Kwong ends with a brieflisting ofthe bare essentials necessary to right the balance—revising the official culture to make goals and guidelines more practical, and effective law enforcement that knows no favor—but avoids the question of whether this is likely or even possible under a regime whose primary objective is to maintain itselfin power. Ifin fact corruption has become part ofthe system by which the Communist Party maintains its control of die state, then it is likely to remain part of the system, even if that control is loosened or even lost. Nevertheless Kwong's book stands out as a concise and valuable approach to a very real dilemma, using a historical approach to identify, define, and describe the problem in the Chinese context. James D. White University ofHawai'i at Mänoa James D. White is aformerjournalist and businessman who workedfor manyyears in Asia and is now a graduate student in the Department ofPolitical Science, researching information flows into and out ofAsia. Jane Kate Leonard. Controllingfrom Afar: The Daoguang Emperor's Management ofthe Grand Canal Crisis, 1824-1826. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, vol. 69. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University ofMichigan, 1996. xxv, 331 pp. isbn 0-89264-114-2. The Daoguang reign (1821-1850) is one ofthe most studied—and most maligned —in late imperial history. Its negative image is grounded in a scholarship that links the many humiliations suffered by China from the Opium War (18391842 ) on to bureaucratic decline and a failure ofimperial leadership that began around the turn ofthe century. There can be litde doubt diat the Qing (16441911 ) entered the nineteenth century faced with huge problems. China's booming population left many peasants without land and taxed die resources and ingenuity ofoverworked officials. Corruption in the late eighteenth century eroded bureaucratic discipline and emptied the national treasury, problems the Jiaqing (1796-1820) emperor's reforms did litde to alleviate. The growth ofthe opium trade in the 1820s raised new concerns about economic stability and social and 470 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 political morality. The dynasty's subsequent defeat at the hands offoreigners presaged its inability to squelch the Taiping rebellion. It is litde wonder that imperial administration in this period has been depicted as a corrupt, inept, inflexible, and factionalized bureaucracy guided by an emperor who ruled as the hidebound conservator of a dynasty in decline. In Controllingfrom Afar: The Daoguang Emperor's Management ofthe Grand Canal Crisis , 1824-26, Jane Kate Leonard forcefully rejects this view, criticizing it as the product of "decades of Opium War scholarship whose Eurocentric assumptions have generally discredited the reign and have discouraged the careful study ofits early years" (p. 3). Leonard takes as a focus one of the institutions seen by critics as central to the problems of dynastic decline: the grain tribute administration. By the nineteenth century, the immense hydraulic system and transport network that encompassed the Grand Canal and the Yellow River was troubled by technological and administrative problems. The dynasty's continued reliance on the Grand Canal for the transport of tribute grain to Beijing is frequently cited as an example of the Qing's inability to undertake meaningful reform ofcorrupt institutions. In the eyes of Daoguang's critics, the 1824 crisis presented the emperor with an opportunity to cast off a system bedeviled by technical problems, official corruption, unruly boatmen, and merchant greed in favor of the unsullied simplicity of shipment of tribute grain by sea. The crisis began in the fall of 1824, when empty barges returning south to be reloaded for the annual shipment of tribute grain were trapped north of the Yellow River by fluctuating water levels in the river and the great reservoir of Hongze Lake. Daoguang berated his officials for delays and demanded action. Although this immediate problem was overcome and the fleet continued south, winter storms collapsed the Gaoyan dike along the eastern edge of Hongze...