Imperial Politics and Confucian Societies in Late Imperial China

Abstract

China began the transition from an aristocratic society to a bureaucratic one more than 600 years before Europe. From a society in which social position and political power were based largely on kinship credentials, China was transformed into a meritocracy in which social prestige and political appointment depended for the most part on written classical examinations to establish legitimate academic credentials. What took more than three centuries in Europe (1600 to 1900) was initiated in China between 750 and 1250, interrupted by the Mongol conquest of North and South China in the thirteenth century, and continued into late imperial China with the restoration of native Chinese rule in 1368. The formation of the Confucian gentry as a nonaristocratic elite class in China, with political status and social prerogatives corroborated through trial by examination, produced social groups that endured until the twentieth century. Although civil service examinations had been instituted in the sixth century, it was not until Empress Wu (r. 690-705) in the late seventh century that rulers in China discovered that officials selected by open examinations served as a useful countervailing force to the power of entrenched aristocrats in capital politics.