Qing Emperors Research Articles

L'intronisation du IXe Dalai lama vue par un prince mongol : un rouleau peint conservé à la bibliothèque de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises

A curious Mongolian scroll is to be found in the library of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Paris. It is a handwritten text dated 1809 plus 12 illustrations, which reports the mission to Lhasa in 1808 of a Prince from the Qaracin banner of Inner Mongolia, sent by the Manchu emperor to supervise the enthronement of the 9th Dalai lama. The scroll, probably intended for the personal records of the Mongolian prince, gives in a manner conforming to the imperial view an account of the events. The analysis of the text and its translation will be published separately in the Journal Asiatique. This article provides an interpretation of the illustrations which represent the birth, discovery, vows taking and enthronement of the 9th Dalai Lama, a pictorial and stylistic analysis of the various elements of the painting and material information about the scroll. Assumptions are formulated about its author, origin, destination and pictorial style.

Empire of emptiness: Buddhist art and political authority in Qing China

Imperial Manchu support and patronage of Buddhism, particularly in Mongolia and Tibet, has often been dismissed as cynical political manipulation. Empire of Emptiness questions this generalization by taking a fresh look at the huge outpouring of Buddhist painting, sculpture, and decorative arts Qing court artists produced for distribution throughout the empire. It examines some of the Buddhist underpinnings of the Qing view of rulership and shows just how central images were in the carefully reasoned rhetoric the court directed toward its Buddhist allies in inner Asia. The multilingual, culturally fluid Qing emperors put an extraordinary range of visual styles into practice - Chinese, Tibetan, Nepalese, and even the European Baroque brought to the court by Jesuit artists. Their pictorial, sculptural, and architectural projects escape easy analysis and raise questions about the difference between verbal and pictorial description, the ways in which overt and covert meaning could be embedded in images through juxtaposition and collage, and the collection and criticism of paintings and calligraphy that were intended as supports for practice and not initially as works of art.

The 2002 Freshfields Lecture -- Arbitration's Protean Nature: The Value of Rules and the Risks of Discretion

> ‘In most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.’ Louis Brandeis1 ### Synopsis The Freshfields Lecture for 2002 questions the wisdom of unfettered arbitrator discretion. The author suggests that the absence of procedural constraint on the arbitral tribunal can create more problems than it solves, often giving the impression of an ‘ad hoc justice’ that damages the perceived legitimacy of the dispute resolution process. Challenging the prevailing orthodoxy about the costs and benefits of discretion, the Lecture explores the feasibility of including; in international arbitration provisions, a set of more precise procedural protocols in institutional provisions, to apply unless the litigants explicitly opt out of the default norms. ### A. Diversity of Motive and Method LET US go back three-quarters of a century. In June 1927, the National Geographic Magazine published an article describing law reform under a Manchu emperor who reigned in the early eighteenth century. Emperor Kang-hsi decided that courts should be as bad as possible so his subjects would settle disputes by arbitration. Responding to a petition about judicial corruption, he decreed as follows: > Lawsuits would tend to increase to a frightful extent if people were not afraid of the tribunals. … I desire therefore that those who have recourse to the courts should be treated without any pity and in such a manner that they shall be disgusted with the law and tremble to appear before a magistrate. In this manner … good citizens who may have difficulties among themselves will settle them like brothers by referring to the arbitration of some old man or the mayor of the commune. As for those who are troublesome, obstinate and quarrelsome, let them be ruined in the law courts.2 So here is one reason to arbitrate: the hope of avoiding a grossly mismanaged …

Mourning in Late Imperial China: Filial Piety and the State

List of illustrations Acknowledgements A note on conventions Reigns of Ming and Qing emperors Introduction 1. Death and the state in imperial China: continuities 2. The reorientation of Ming attitudes toward mourning 3. The early Qing transformation of mourning practice 4. The bureaucratization of the Confucian li 5. The death of Xiaoxian and the crisis of Qianlong rule 6. Death and Chinese society Select bibliography Index.

Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China (review)

Reviewed by: Of Body and Brush: The Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth Century China R. Kent Guy Of Body and Brush: The Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth Century China. By Angela Zito. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Pp. xix + 311. Hardcover $45.00. Paper $17.95. It may be best to think of the argument of Angela Zito's enormously stimulating book Of Body and Brush: The Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth Century [End Page 623] China as a series of concentric circles. At its core is a careful and satisfyingly annotated translation of the chapters of the Comprehensive Rites of the Qing (Da Qing tong li) (1756) that concern the grand sacrifice, the most important ceremonial moment in the life of a Qing emperor. From her careful and original analysis of these materials, Zito is able to bring new life not only to the Qianlong Emperor himself but also to the worlds of which he was, or sought to be, the center. These included the officials who served him, the community of scholars and editors who wrote about ritual, and the people who looked to the state for models of the centering process. In so doing, she rescues the eighteenth century from the accusation that it was the "graveyard of modernity." But she also examines the nature of Chinese ritual itself, in a way that explodes Western assumptions and explores Chinese subjectivities. There are far too many implications of this book to deal with in a short review, and any choice of themes is somewhat subjective. Zito's suggestion that we refer to the community of Chinese officials as an "imperium" rather than a "bureaucracy" (à la Weber) is a convincing one that will certainly influence our narrative practice. I was most impressed, however, with what I found to be the triumphant demonstration that this book achieves of the vitality of ritual in the eighteenth century. We have always known, at some level, that ritual was important in China, but we have not always known what to do with this fact. Like contemporary undergraduates who respond with blank stares when asked if they have ever participated in a ritual (I have tried this), we have stood mute before the mountain of Chinese primary source materials dealing with ritual. In showing us a way to read ritual texts, Zito reminds us that these provided for the Chinese a way of "making manifest" (p. 79) the power of heaven in human affairs, and re-actualizing past words in present ceremonial. In short, eighteenth-century students of ritual texts were hardly antiquarians; they were actually optimists, pursuing the possibility that the realities of the golden age of the past could actually be recovered in the present. And they were not only this, of course, for Zito offers the fascinating suggestion that in a world where literacy was becoming more common, the analysts of ritual were attempting to recuperate their social and political positions as "interpreters and creators of authority" by reconnecting writing and obscure ancient ritual practice. This comment, however, is really an aside in an argument that is mainly concerned with how ritual was acted out in the eighteenth century. The details of the Grand Sacrifice—the various prostrations, placements, and profferings—are compellingly described and interpreted here. One waits—to say "breathlessly" may be a bit strong, but certainly with mounting anticipation—to see what historical associations or symbolic statements will come next in this most theatrical of imperial performances. One of the most interesting questions is whether the emperor sacrificed as a filial son—human, like the officials who surrounded him on the lower steps of the altar, or like a sage whose access to the heavenly realm was of a qualitatively different character than that of any other mortal. Of course the emperor was both, and it was the function of ritual, as Zito argues, to negotiate the differences between the two. [End Page 624] What is at stake in this volume is nothing less than an attempt to recover the mentality of those who were engaged in ritual practices. What did it mean when the emperor clothed his body in ceremonial...

The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies

This essay examines the transformation from undifferentiated frontier to geographic region of that part of northeast Asia controversially referred to as Manchuria. This transition—from space to place, as it were—long has tended to be seen primarily in terms of the extension of colonial interests into China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, as I shall argue, the invention of this place began much earlier, in the seventeenth century, and owed substantially to the efforts of China's Manchu rulers, who claimed it as their homeland, the terre natale of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Even as the area was joined to the larger empire, Qing emperors took care to invest what I define as “Greater Mukden” with a unique identity.

The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (review)

Reviewed by: The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions Jane Kate Leonard (bio) Evelyn S. Rawski . The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998. xii, 481 pp. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 0-520-21289-4. Evelyn Rawski's The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions is a remarkable work of historical synthesis and descriptive analysis of the intimate social world of the Qing dynasty's ruling elite. Her purpose is to capture the aims and intentions of the Qing emperors from the Manchu imperial perspective, which she extrapolates from the material culture of the Qing court, the social hierarchy of the inner power structure, and the state rituals and the personal religious practices of the court. Her thesis argues that the unique material culture, social hierarchy, and rituals of kingship demonstrate that the Qing monarchs were multi-ethnic in their approach to kingship and practical governance. She further argues that their success was due not to "sinicization" but to their multiethnic perspective, which enabled them to craft regionally specific approaches to their diverse constituencies of Mongols, northeastern peoples, Tibetans, and Han Chinese. Thus, in a sense, she proposes that the Manchu imperial worldview and ritual style, which incorporated the rituals and value systems of these constituencies, were the sources of their success. The study is arranged in three parts that detail the material culture of the Qing court, the social hierarchy of the inner power structure of the imperial elite, and the multicultural rituals of kingship and personal religious practices of the imperial family. The first part starts with a careful description of the character and use of imperial space, and includes a discussion of the three capitals (Beijing, Shengjing, and Chengde, with excellent maps), the imperial hunting grounds, seasonal tours, and the Inner City. This section is concluded with descriptive detail on language, clothing, court robes, food, martial arts, and art. The author's intention in this section is to show the unique attributes of the imperial public and private space and the Qing emperors' purposeful efforts to maintain a separate Manchu identity, but one which embodied a universalist approach to king-ship. The implications of this universalist approach are that the Manchu dynasts were oriented equally to the Han heartland and the strategic Mongol-Tibetan axis. The third part of the book is similar in intention to the first. It centers on the Manchu approach to the performance of state rituals and the syncretic nature of the ruling family's personal religious practices. Both are intended to show that the Manchu rulers were purposefully "Manchu" in their construction and practice of the legitimizing rituals of kingship and of personal religion. These rituals, the author emphasizes, incorporated the symbols and belief systems of all the peoples in the Qing empire, including those in the Inner Asian borderlands and the Han heartland. [End Page 201] For the Qing specialist, these parts of the study are extremely useful and enlightening because they provide a glimpse into the daily lives of the Qing emperors in their public and private activities. Rawski evokes the texture of their daily personal and work lives, and we see them as multidimensional people. These insights essentially reaffirm what we have long understood about the Qing emperors and their exercise of imperial power. They were skilled institution builders who fused the China heartland and the Inner Asian borderlands into one empire of greater China. They were tireless and creative administrators in governing both the Han and non-Han regions. Moreover, they achieved a level of concerned, or conscientious, governance over the course of the dynasty that was probably unmatched in earlier dynasties. These emperors were tough-minded administrators, and they maintained vigilant scrutiny of vital areas of administration that they considered strategically important to the perpetuation of their rule. Rawski's depiction of the setting in which they worked, their differing personal styles, and their manipulation of ritual symbols to legitimize their rule deepens and reaffirms our understanding of precisely those very governing qualities. For example, her account of the three capitals, the hunts, and the use of the inner...

The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (review)

122 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. i, Spring 1999 ship makes threatening statements or when American intelligence detects any possible PLA preparation for the use offorce in the Taiwan Strait. John Garver is to be commended for producing an excellent in-depth analysis of the 1996 crisis. Academicians, policy makers, and the general public will enjoy reading this book as it illuminates the impact of the political dynamics on foreign policy decisions within China, the United States, and Taiwan that gave rise to the 1996 crisis. Garver differentiates between Chinese "anti-hegemonist conservatives " and the "realpolitik mainstream" and shows not only that the PRC leadership is not monolithic, but that whatever point ofview prevails in Beijing is of enormous consequence. Moreover, Garver also raises thought-provoking policy issues with regard to China and Taiwan, challenging American policy makers to define U.S. policy interests in Taiwan clearly and think through the problem of how to cope with a rising China. Parris H. Chang Pennsylvania State University Parris H. Chang is a professor emeritus ofpolitical science and President ofthe Taiwan Institute ofPolitical, Economic and Strategic Studies, and concurrently a member ofTaiwan's Legislative Yuan (Parliament). mm Melvyn C. Goldstein. The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997. xiii, 152 pp. Hardcover $19.95, ISBN 520-21254-1. In recent years the Tibet Question, that is, the issue ofthe political status ofTibet vis-à-vis China, has emerged at the forefront ofAmerican culture and politics. Both specialists and novices interested in this issue, as well as watchers ofcontemporary China, will find Melvyn Goldstein's The Snow Lion and the Dragon an invaluable, but not incontrovertible, resource. In this concise monograph Goldstein skillfully explains the history ofthe Tibet Question, critically analyzes the contemporary motivations and intentions ofkey figures in both Beijing and Dharamsala, and boldly offers a peaceful solution to a question that has plagued 1 " China's internal and external relations, brought undue suffering to all Tibetans, and is threatening Tibetan culture with irrevocable change. By dividing the body ofhis text into discrete sections, Goldstein suggests that Sino-Tibetan relations have existed in five distinct forms. In section one, "The ofHawai'i Press Reviews 123 Imperial Era" (which he leaves undefined), Goldstein asserts that "Tibet was in no way subordinate to China," and that "each was a distinct and independent political entity" (p. 1). While this assertion is generally accurate, substantial evidence exists suggesting some degree ofpolitical suzerainty over Tibet by the Mongols and the Manchus, two non-Han ethnic groups who maintained dynastic rule over China. Striving to present history in a fair and balanced manner, Goldstein qualifies his broad assertion by discussing this suzerainty in terms of a system of "passive hegemony" that was created by Qing (Manchu) emperors to exert their influence in Tibet, while also emphasizing that actual Chinese influence there varied dramatically during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). Having dealt in great depth with Tibet's period of de facto independence from China following the fall of the Qing elsewhere,1 Goldstein briefly summarizes in section two die crucial period from 1912 to 1949 during which Tibet managed its affairs free from any Chinese influence. Here Goldstein highlights the importance of the failed Simla Convention in shaping our contemporary understanding of the Tibet Question as a conflict over the de jure political status of Tibet vis-à-vis China, as well as the development ofthe "bad-friend syndrome" between Tibet and various Western powers. In his discussion ofthe third phase of Sino-Tibetan relations, Goldstein cogently analyzes the circumstances surrounding the development ofthe first formal written agreement between China and Tibet acknowledging the sovereignly of the former over the latter—the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation ofTibet. In so doing he dispels the common misunderstanding in the West that radical Maoist reforms began in Tibet immediately following the signing ofthis agreement by pointing out that Mao, at least initially, adopted a policy of "gradualism" with regard to reform in Tibet. Moreover, Goldstein lucidly shows how the failure of this policy was due both to overzealous Chinese socialist reformers and competing forces in...

Hong Kong's Unique Constitutional Odyssey and Its Implications for China

n the long twilight following Hobsbawm's Age of Empire,' which began at the I end of the Second World War and lasted almost until the third millennium, Hong Kong lived up to its well-worn sobriquet place, borrowed time.'2 Such description arose not merely from Hong Kong's increasingly anachronistic status as a British crown colony in an age of decolonization. The characterization emerged, more legalistically, from the fact that approximately 92 percent of Hong Kong's four hundred square miles adjoin the Chinese mainland. That area, together with some two hundred outlying islands known as the New Territories (without which Hong Kong was not judged viable) was, in the eyes of international law, merely a temporary British possession by virtue of a ninety-nine-year lease granted to Queen Victoria by the Qing Emperor Guangxu under the 1898 Second Convention of Peking.3 That a lease was devised as opposed to an outright cession (which governed the legal status of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Penin-

Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (review)

430 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Dali L. Young is an assistantprofessor ofpolitical science and the author o/Calamity and Reform in China (Stanford University Press, 1996.) mi James L. Hevia. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of1793. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995. xv, 292 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 0-8223-1625-0. Paperback $15.95, isbn 0-8223-1637-4. There has been much renewed interest in the historical significance of the 1793 Macartney mission to Qing China in both the West and China. For example, Joanna Waley-Cohen, in her recent article on Chinese reactions to Western technology in the late eighteenth century ("China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century," American Historical Review 98, no. 5 [1993]: 1525-1544), has revised earlier assessments of Qing dynasty blindness to world developments in the eighteendi century and has shown how these erroneous assessments grew out ofWestern technological superiority after the nineteenth-century industrial revolution, which was then read back into the Macartney mission to China by later historians and diplomats. This misassessment in Western attitudes toward China, Waley-Cohen argues, was also due in part to the Qing court's need under the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-1795) to reassert the "public Chinese attitude of superiority toward foreigners" in the factionalized domestic politics of1793 at the same time that it avidly employed Jesuit experts in the arts ofwarfare for its late eighteenth-century military campaigns against rebels within the empire. Hevia's book continues this revisionist trend by reevaluating the Macartney mission in light ofQing foreign relations and die development ofmodern European diplomacy. Cherishing Men From Afar explores Manchu and British imperial formations in the late eighteenth century as the cultural productions of two expansive imperialisms with equally universalist pretensions. Their different modes ofpolitical practice based on competing sets ofhierarchical relationships and political claims betray, according to Hevia, substantially different conceptual frameworks and signifying practices. Consequently, the Macartney embassy to the Qianlong court© 1996 by University was not caught up in a simple conflict between a "traditionalist" Chinese tribute ofHawai'i Presssystem and a "modern" European diplomacy whose driving force was an entrenched "culturalism" in the traditional Chinese political world. Instead, Hevia suggests that the Chinese "tribute system" model used by John K. Fairbank and Reviews 431 many others since has overdetermined the confrontation by essentializing it as an inevitable confrontation between tradition (China) and modernity (the West), thereby missing the specific historical challenges that a land-based Qing Imperium and a seafaring British empire each faced when they encountered each other for the first time in 1793. According to Hevia, the two modes of Qing and British diplomacy must each be unraveled in order to understand how the Qing framework for imperial ceremonies ofguest ritual and imperial audience and the British notion ofinternational relations interacted. In the process, we learn how European discourse on diplomacy between equal states was itselfa historical artifact ofEuropean global expansion whose naturalizing discourse of sovereign equality in effect legitimated discursive forms ofsymbolic violence (Western superiority / Qing arrogance) in 1793 before diplomacy was transformed into open warfare (free trade / Opium War) in 1839—an argument that of course derives from Edward Said's Orientalism but is now redeployed in Sino-Western relations. We also see how the Manchu cosmopolitical order for the production and negotiation ofimperial power was based on specific ritual and ceremonial procedures that informed how Qing officials would handle the requests of an emissary ofthe British empire. The strength of Hevia's account lies in its clear delineation ofdie basis for Manchu rulership in the Qing Imperium. In a realm filled with heterogeneous Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and other ethnic lords, the Manchu rulers successfully used lordship as the basis for organizing interdomainal relations and incorporated such lords under the Qing emperor's claims to political preeminence. Ritual and its attendant forms ofceremonial behavior (i.e., "disposition ofbodies" via the kowtow, etc.) were the cosmologica! forms ofpolitical interaction between lords that revealed their inclusion under the Qing and the negotiated forms of that inclusion. Accordingly, Hevia makes it clear how the Macartney embassy to China was perceived by the...

Archival Research in Qing Legal History

ARCHIVAL RESEARCH IN QING LEGAL HISTORY* Nancy Park and Robert Antony Over the past few years there has been a resurgence of interest in Qing law, a field that peaked in the 1960s and early 1970s with the publication of several classic works on late imperial law and government.1 fascinating subject, branching off into the spheres of civil, administrative, and commercial law as well as continuing the more traditional focus on criminal law. The research potential of Qing law seems limitless, and the possibilities are enhanced by a wealth of virtually untapped primary and archival sources. The Number One Historical Archives of China (Zhongguo diyi lishi danganguan ) in Beijing houses a rich trove of materials on Qing law and related topics in social and economic history.2 During the three-year period in which one or both of us worked at the Number One we handled many different types of legal documents, and in this article we would like to share with a larger audience what we learned about the types and uses of these materials. Although our survey is scarcely exhaustive, we have tried to describe some of the major archival sources for Qing law in order to bring them to the attention of other researchers. We have directed our remarks to scholars who are primarily interested in using legal documents in the Number One; however, 'Nancy Park worked in the Archives from 1990 to 1991, collecting information on bribery cases involving governors-general and governors for her dissertation, "Corruption and Its Recompense: Bribes, Bureaucracy, and the Law in Late Imperial China." Robert Antony worked there in 1985 and 1990 examining larceny cases for a study on "Bandits, Brotherhoods , and Qing Law in Guangdong, 1760-1840." We would like to thank the staff of the Number One Historical Archives as well as the Institute of Qing History and the Archival Department of Chinese People's University for their hospitality and assistance. For research funding and institutional support, we are both grateful to the National Academy of Sciences' Committee for Scholarly Communication with China, with Robert Antony additionally indebted to the Fulbright-Hays Program and Western Kentucky University. Finally, we wish to express our appreciation to Philip Kuhn, Robert Marks, Evelyn Rawski, and Kristin Stapleton for reading and commenting on this article. 1Among others, Ch'ii 1962; van der Sprenkel 1962; Bodde and Morris 1967; Watt 1972; and Metzger 1973. 2For descriptions of holdings at the Number One Historical Archives of China see Zhongguo diyi lishi dang'anguan guancang dang'an gaishu 1985; Bartlett 1981:81-110; Naquin 1980:45-60; and Shan 1981:3-8. Late Imperial China Vol. 14, No. 1 (June 1993): 93-137 93 94Nancy Park and Robert Antony primarily interested in using legal documents in the Number One; however, we believe that many of our comments have broader significance. On one level, much of what we describe about the organization and content of legal materials held by the Number One will be useful to individuals specializing in a wide range of topics in Qing history including, but not limited to, law. On a second level, our statements about the types and uses of particular documents within the Number One's archival collections hold true to a large degree for the archival holdings in Taiwan.3 We have organized this article according to major archival collections within the Grand Secretariat, Grand Council, Board of Punishments, and other central government organs. We have assumed the reader's acquaintance with the standard archival sources available for Qing history; therefore, we have concentrated on materials within each collection that hold the most promise for the study of law in late imperial China, prefacing our remarks with a short description of the collection as a whole. To make our comments as comprehensive and helpful as possible, we have included references to selected sources and research aids on Qing institutional and documentary systems.4 The Grand Secretariat Archive Inherited from the Ming dynasty, the Grand Secretariat (Neige) was the supreme advisory organ to the early Qing emperors until the development of the Grand Council (Junjichu) during the Yongzheng and early Qianlong reigns. Thereafter, the Grand Secretariat's power and prestige...

The Lifanyuan and the Inner Asian Rituals in the Early Qing (1644-1795)

THE LIFANYUAN AND THE INNER ASIAN RITUALS IN THE EARLY QING (1644-1795)* Ning Chia The Qing empire under Manchu rule (1644-1911) created the political entity today known as "China" by integrating the traditional antagonists, agrarian "China proper" (neidi)1 and nomadic Inner Asia.2 This major historical development cannot be understood without discussing the role of the Lifanyuan, as the first and only government institution in Chinese history designed specifically to deal with the various groups of Inner Asian peoples.3 The unique Qing Inner Asian rituals, under the direct administration of the Lifanyuan, played a critical part in the Manchus' ability to expand the empire beyond the Inner Asian frontier. These rituals provided the symbolic instruments by which relations between Chinese and Inner Asian groups were recast from a problem of foreign policy to one of internal imperial administration. The Inner Asian population—the Mongols, Tibetans, and Uighurs—like the Manchus were physically and culturally non-Han Chinese. They had undergone their own distinct historical experiences and processes of development , often in conscious opposition to Han-Chinese society. During the pre-Qing periods, the two forms of society—agricultural China and nomadic "The author is grateful to William T. Rowe of The Johns Hopkins University, Susan Naquin of the University of Pennsylvania, and Maxine and Donald Huffman of Central College for their helpful comments on this article. 1 Neidi in Chinese means "inner land." It is used here to refer to the geographical area where the Han Chinese people lived. The size of the area changed dynasty by dynasty in history. On the eve of the Qing, it was approximately the territory from the Great Wall in the north all the way to the South China Sea, and east from the sea to today's Shaanxi province in the west. 2Scholars have used the term "Inner Asia" differently in defining the people and territory along the Great Wall frontier of China. See Chia 1991. In this article, I follow Lattimore 1988 in using this term for Qing Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang (or Chinese Turkestan). Historically, the Mongols in Mongolia were divided into two parts in the Qing dynasty. South of the Gobi Desert was called Inner Mongolia, and north of it Khalka or Outer Mongolia. The latter became the Mongolian People's Republic in 1912. 3For discussion of this issue see Chia 1991:31-32 and 99. The Xuanzhengyuan (Commission for Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs) in the Mongol Yuan dynasty was only responsible for Tibet—one of the several parts of Inner Asia. Late imperial China Vol. 14, No. 1 (June 1993): 60-92 60 The Lifanyuan and the Inner Asian Rituals61 Inner Asia—had been separated from each other by various boundaries, including social structure, political organization, material life, language, and ethnic consciousness. War and military actions characterized the relationship between the two. The Manchus of the early Qing, a people of Inner Asian origin themselves undergoing transformation from the nomadic to the agricultural world, faced the same problem as previous Chinese dynasties: how to find a lasting solution for the conflict along the Inner Asian frontier. The response of a Manchu-Mongol-staffed institution—the Lifanyuan—in the imperial court provided the basis for this solution. The uniqueness of the Qing Lifanyuan can be seen immediately from its Manchu-language title. Far from "Barbarian Control Office" or "Court of Colonial Affairs," which are common and reasonably correct translations of the Chinese-language title "Lifanyuan," in Manchu the name of this office was Tulergi golo be dasara jurgan, the "Ministry Ruling the Outer Provinces." This Manchu version of the institution's title reveals how different was the Manchu cultural and political attitude toward Inner Asia from that of the Chinese.4 Based on this attitude, the Qing practiced unprecedented policies in Inner Asia. When the Lifanyuan came into being in 1638, it was classified, together with the Six Boards and the Censurate (Duchayuan), as one of the "eight yamen"—the eight most important governmental departments.5 During its formative period under the high Qing emperors, Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng (1723-1735), and Qianlong (1736-1795), the Lifanyuan was promoted to be equal to the Six Boards...

Constitutionalism in the Late Qing—Conception and Practice

I Democracy is the main political trend in modern times. China has been influenced by this trend ever since its contact with the West in the nineteenth century. Advocates of democracy in the late Qing period in China were divided into two groups, the Revolutionaries and the Constitutionalists. Though the two groups were equally committed to the development of democracy in China, their ideas about how to achieve this goal were vastly different. The Revolutionaries wanted to overthrow the monarchy through revolution in order to establish a republic. The Constitutionalists wanted to reform the existing government structure under the Qing emperor, to impose a parliamentary system on the existing order, similar to Great Britain's system of government, whereby the monarch would be reduced to a figurehead. The Revolutionaries and the Constitutionalists worked independently and competitively to implement their separate strategies. Ultimately, the Manchu dynasty was overthrown as a result of continuous uprisings l...

Zhang Tingyu and Reconciliation: The Scholar and the State in the Early Qianlong Reign

Vol. 7, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1986 ZHANG TINGYU AND RECONCILIATION: THE SCHOLAR AND THE STATE IN THE EARLY QIANLONG REIGN R. Kent Guy* The political styles associated with the reigns of the Yongzheng emperor and of his successor the Qianlong emperor present one of the most striking and suggestive contrasts in late imperial history. Perhaps no Qing emperor has piqued the historian's curiosity more than Yinzhen, the man who ruled as Yongzheng emperor from 1723 to 1735. The story of his rise to power has all the elements of a pot-boiler - violence, voodoo, murder and revenge - as the young and perhaps somewhat unstable prince eliminated rival claimants to his father's throne. Once in power, he embarked on an ambitious series of reforms which transformed bureaucratic communications, taxation, the administration of finance, and the organization of the army in remarkably modern directions, but which also generated significant hostility from China's landholders and powerholders .1 By contrast, the Qianlong emperor's rights of succession were apparently unquestioned, and when enthroned he seemed intent to make his reign a continuous celebration of the glories of the Chinese past and the harmony of relations between scholars and the state. Probably more important, many of the Yongzheng reforms were reshaped during the Qianlong reign, not so much by outright repudiation, as by subtle shifts in administrative goals and priorities. As the evidence below will show, the two monarchs not only had different styles of rule, but chose men of different political visions and different social backgrounds to serve them. This essay will begin the task of explaining the transition from Yongzheng I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the hospitality and research assistance of the staff of the First Historical Archives in Beijing, together with a grant from the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC, which made this research possible. Useful critical comment came from Professors Beatrice S. Bartlett of Yale University and John Henderson of Louisiana State University, and the editors of Late Imperial China. 1 The nature of the Yongzheng succession has proven to be one of the most complex and recalcitrant issues of early modern Chinese history. For highlights of the discussion, see Meng, 1943, Wang, 1957: 147-193, and Wu, 1979. On the Yongzheng reforms, see Huang, 1974, Wu, 1970 and most recently Zelin, 1984. 50 Zhang Tingyu and Reconciliation51 to Qianlong and exploring its significance. The Yongzheng legacy became an issue in the earliest days of the Qianlong reign, and it was debated in terms of the moral and official obligations of those who served at court and in senior provincial office. Events in the early months of the Qianlong reign suggested, to those alert to their significance, the nature of the transition that was underway. Given the nature of the Chinese state, debate over political priorities often took disguised forms. Discussion of philosophy and political and administrative styles of behavior could become an oblique method for discussing issues of policy, and the Chinese courtier became adept at reading the political significance of gossip. The moment of imperial succession provided a natural opening for a break with the policies of the previous ruler, but in a Confucian setting, the successor was deemed bound by ties of filial loyalty to his father's legacy. In the early Qianlong period, the reforms of the Yongzheng era were a part of the Qianlong emperor's patrimony. Anyone who proposed or defended change in the structure of institutions ran the risk of suggesting that Qianlong was unfilial. No one could question the correctness of the deceased emperor's judgment. However, there was room to discuss whether a filial son and successor should pursue his father's policies with rigor and severity, or with generosity and leniency. The discussion of leniency and severity in early months of the new reign served to mask consideration of new policies. It most often centered around the role of the provincial governor.2 This was hardly surprising, for provincial governors had been the agents of the Yongzheng reforms. They had been the main authors of secret memorials, the main recipients of court letters, and they were the agents of government closest to the...

The state and the economy in late imperial China

Non-development of a modern economy, the failure to begin modern economic growth, I am prepared to argue but that would require another article- is “over-determined.” It's not a particularly interesting theoretical question any more. Proponents of economic, political, cultural, social structural, demographic and other explanations have each adduced overwhelming arguments and evidence for their favored explanations. In fact, any one - or two - is a sufficiently mortal debility for the premodern economies and societies that they have studied. More is merely overkill. What we really don't know for sure yet is how modern economic growth begins - even in the case of Western Europe whose economic history has been minutely examined for more than a century. The common fate of most of mankind before the very recent past - slow and uncertain premodern growth of population and output where it occurred, stagnation or decline otherwise - has not (by historians at least) received attention comparable to the more fashionable problem of modern development, whether that be phrased as the Marxist “transition” from “feudalism” to “capitalism,” the neo-classical growth model, or the perhaps now somewhat faded study of “modernization.”

Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor, Bondservant and Master.

In this highly praised book, Jonathan D. Spence recounts the story of Ts'ao Yin, hereditary bond-servant to the Manchu emperors. Ts'ao Yin, whose great-grandfather was captured and enslaved by the Manchus and whose descendant wrote Dream of the Red Chamber, China's most famous novel, becomes the focal point of a fascinating study that shed important light on the social and political life of the early Manchu period.

Warlordism: A Transitory Stage in Chinese Government

After the collapse of the Manchu Empire the traditional obedience to Manchu emperors was claimed by local warlords who maintained semi-independent provincial armies and appropriated the local revenues. The Chinese civil wars from 1917 to 1926 were products of the conflict between the rich and poor provinces, between the provincial warlords, and between the provinces and the central government. The nationalist movement with Sun Yat-sen as leader proclaimed its support of basic social reforms, chief among which was the eradication of warlordism. But the capture of Nanking in 1927 gave Chiang Kai-shek control of the most westernized parts of China. He turned his attentionto building a new government structure from Nanking and dropped social reform. Subsequent civil wars established Chiang Kai-shek's ability as a super-warlord to maintain control over central China, but warlordism continued. Chiang's belief that his conservative mission in China would not be ralized until he had smashed the Chinese Soviet Rep...

Peking's First Manchu Emperor

The first Manchu emperor to occupy the dragon throne in Peking's famous Forbidden City palace was a six-year-old boy, Fu-lin, grandson of Nurhachi, the first Manchu empirebuilder.' On October 30, 1644, Fu-lin was enthroned as Son of Heaven and successor to the Chinese Ming emperor who, several months previously, committed suicide to escape capture by a Chinese rebel army. And so sixty years of persistent effort brought triumph to the third generation of a Manchu family from north of the Great Wall.

Archaic Bronzes and Tibetan Jade

The idea that Tibetan art can be highly sophisticated and refined is not likely to occur to the average student of art. Even to most of those whose interest lies in the Far East, the word Tibet conjures up the kaleidoscopic image of yaks, snow, filth, lamas, of grotesque idols and masks, and perhaps some greasy temple banners. It is then somewhat of a shock to realize that the exquisite jades on display at Ton-Ying and Company were made in Tibet as New Year gifts and sent to China for the delectation of the Manchu Emperor, Ch'ien Lung.

Twilight in the Forbidden City.

Introduction Preface 1. The Reform Movement of 1898 2. The collapse of the Reform Movement 3. Reaction and the Boxer Movement, 1898-1901 4. The last years of Kuang-Hsu, 1901-1908 5. The Empress-Dowager, T`zu-Hsi 6. The Revolution, 1911 7. The 'Articles of Favourable Treatment' of the Manchu Imperial House 8. The Ta Ch`ing and the Hung Hsien Emperors 9. Change Hsun and the Restoration of 1917 10. Autobiography of the Old Man of the Pine-Tree (translated from the Chinese) 11. The Forbidden City, 1919-1924 12. The Imperial tutors 13. The Manchu court in twilight 14. The Imperial Household Department (Nei Wu Fu) 15. The dragon unfledged 16. Monarchist hopes and dreams 17. The dragon restless 18. The dragon flaps his wings 19. Dragon and phoenix 20. Plots and stratagems 21. The Imperial garden 22. The summer palace 23. The Fifth of November 24. The dragon caged 25. The flight of the dragon Epilogue: the dragon goes home Pedigree of the Manchu Emperors Notes Index.