Loyal Souls Come Home: Manifest Loyalty Shrines and the Decentering of War Commemoration in the Qing Empire (1724–1803)

Abstract

Loyal Souls Come HomeManifest Loyalty Shrines and the Decentering of War Commemoration in the Qing Empire (1724–1803)* James Bonk (bio) The Manifest Loyalty shrine (Zhaozhongci), a large complex holding spirit tablets of all Qing war dead (zhenwang guanbing), was established by the Yongzheng emperor in 1724 on a property north of Chongwen gate in Beijing (Figure 1). With the military campaigns of the Qianlong reign (1736–95), the number of tablets in the shrine grew steadily. By the mid-1790s, the shrine held more than fifty thousand tablets. The White Lotus War (1796–1804), a conflict involving tens of thousands of troops in central China, led to a surge in the number of tablets. In the first five years of the war, nearly sixty thousand more tablets crowded the shrine's already overburdened tables and shelves.1 In 1802, the Jiaqing emperor (r. 1796–1820) responded to the overcrowding with an order to build Manifest Loyalty shrines in all prefectural seats (fucheng) of the empire. The new shrines, he directed, were to hold tablets of the war dead in their native places (yuanji). [End Page 61] The Beijing shrine would be restricted to the tablets of bannermen and high-ranking Han civil and military officials.2 By enshrining the dead in their native places, the emperor proclaimed, "not only would loyal souls return to their native lands (gu tu), fellow villagers and kinsmen [of the dead] would join together as an audience, gaining a greater understanding of the excellence of the dynasty's principles and clarity of its favor, and would therefore be even more inspired [to act with loyalty]."3 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Manifest Loyalty shrine, Huacheng si, and Tangzi. From Qianlong Jingcheng quan tu vol. 10 (1750, rept. 1940). The Chongwen gate, not pictured on the map, is south on the main thoroughfare east of the temple and shrine. The Jiaqing emperor's decision raises a question—were these new shrines simply the product of a pragmatic decision to avoid overcrowding at the shrine in Beijing, or did they signal a broader change in the nature of war commemoration in the early nineteenth century? In her book The Culture of War in China, Joanna Waley-Cohen characterized the eighteenth century as a time of cultural "militarization."4 According [End Page 62] to Waley-Cohen, the Qianlong emperor oversaw the development of a spectacular, "multi-layered" culture of war that both celebrated the empire's westward expansion and promoted Manchu martial values.5 Unfortunately, Waley-Cohen's thorough survey of war-related ritual and cultural production under the Qianlong emperor left unanswered the question of how this culture of war evolved in the nineteenth century. The present study argues that the building of prefectural Manifest Loyalty shrines was part of a shift in the Qing culture of war in the early nineteenth century. As a conquest dynasty that staked its authority on military superiority, the Qing crafted war commemoration in the eighteenth century to enhance the martial image of the Eight Banners while downplaying the military role of the largely Han Green Standards (lüying). The most ostentatious honors for accomplishments on the battlefield, such as the portraits of eminent generals hung in the Pavilion of Purple Light (Ziguang ge), were rarely given to Green Standard officers.6 State efforts to promote an image of banner military power were accompanied by a suppression of Chinese writing on military topics. Matthew Mosca has noted that Qianlong's ban on "virtually all recent Chinese works on military strategy" had the effect of "warning the literati off the topic."7 The Manifest Loyalty shrine in Beijing was, as I discuss below, unusual in its mission to enshrine the dead of both the Green Standards and banners. However, in many ways it resembled other elements of the eighteenth-century culture of war. It was controlled by the central government and intentionally banner-centered. Though tablets of the Green Standard dead far outnumbered those of bannermen overall, the tablets of banner generals dominated the main halls of the shrine.8 [End Page 63] In the early nineteenth century central government control over the commemoration of war...