The Politics and Practice of Moral Rectitude in the Late Ming: The Case of Huang Daozhou (1585–1646)

Abstract

This study investigates the employment of zhongxiao (lit.: loyalty-filial piety) in lateMing politics by examining the life and career of Huang Daozhou, a famous scholar-official during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. This close examination of Huang’s intellectual work, political activities, and social life, as well as his interaction with colleagues and the emperor, illustrates the many ways in which zhongxiao ethics operated in lateMing politics, as an intellectual question, an important measure of moral cultivation and means of image-making, a weapon in political attacks and counterattacks, a vocabulary for political communication, and a language that helped perpetuate the Confucian moral-political ideals in the construction of the historical narrative of a dynastic transition. These uses of zhongxiao exemplify not only late Ming literati’s intensive and creative engagement with traditional ideals and practices but also the significance of moral rectitude in late Ming politics and in the historiography of the Ming-Qing transition.