Yingyung Shengxi : Military Entrepreneurship in the High Qing Period, 1700-1800

Abstract

������ ��� The Qing dynasty impresses historians not just with its extraordinary military prowess displayed before 1800, but also with its effective ways of keeping its enormous military forces fed until the White Lotus Rebellion (1796– 1804). When the Qing replaced the Ming dynasty (1638–1644) in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Qing inherited many institutions and systems from the Ming. Nevertheless, it was also determined to avoid one mistake that the Ming had made—namely, the failure to keep its military well financed. The Qing dynasty did away with the military colony system of the Ming dynasty and, instead, allocated a considerable portion of its financial resources to satisfy the military’s ever-expanding expenditures. 2 At times, the Qing state did find it difficult to meet the immense financial needs of its military. It had to explore new ways. This article will explore one experiment of the Qing state in this regard, the “yingyun shengxi” (procuring profits through entrepreneurial operation) policy, which authorized the military, including both Manchu garrisons and the Green Standard Army, to involve itself in commercial activities in order to obtain extra funding for soldiers’ non-essential needs. Even though this policy did not become a permanent institution, its rise and fall in the eighteenth century testifies to the efforts the Qing state made in the direction of rationalizing the mechanism of military finances, and reveals a rarely noticed aspect of Qing politics. Past scholarship has explored at length the Qing financial systems and new policies in general in its efforts to establish legitimacy for the nascent dy