Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette
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COMMUNICATION, EMPIRE, AND AUTHORITY IN THE QING GAZETTE by Emily Carr Mokros A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland June, 2016 © 2016 Emily Carr Mokros All rights Reserved Abstract This dissertation studies the political and cultural roles of official information and political news in late imperial China. Using a wide-ranging selection of archival, library, and digitized sources from libraries and archives in East Asia, Europe, and the United States, this project investigates the production, regulation, and reading of the Peking Gazette (dibao, jingbao), a distinctive communications channel and news publication of the Qing Empire (1644-1912). Although court gazettes were composed of official documents and communications, the Qing state frequently contracted with commercial copyists and printers in publishing and distributing them. As this dissertation shows, even as the Qing state viewed information control and dissemination as a strategic concern, it also permitted the free circulation of a huge variety of timely political news. Readers including both officials and non-officials used the gazette in order to compare judicial rulings, assess military campaigns, and follow court politics and scandals. As the first full-length study of the Qing gazette, this project shows concretely that the gazette was a powerful factor in late imperial Chinese politics and culture, and analyzes the close relationship between information and imperial practice in the Qing Empire. By arguing that the ubiquitous gazette was the most important link between the Qing state and the densely connected information society of late imperial China, this project overturns assumptions that underestimate the importance of court gazettes and the extent of popular interest in political news in Chinese history. Through engagement with previously unstudied gazettes, manuscripts, and diaries, the project demonstrates that political news and information derived from court gazettes influenced both individual encounters with the state and, more broadly, the evolution of administrative practice in ii the Qing Empire. In so doing, this project connects scholarship in the emerging field of information history with work on Qing political institutions, print culture, and the history of newspapers. The project highlights the encounters of readers, publishers, and administrators with gazettes in order to illustrate the complexity and richness of information practices in a non-Western early modern context. In addition to demonstrating that court gazettes are important and underutilized sources for the study of Qing history, this project’s findings should encourage scholars of information and the state in other global contexts to investigate popular encounters with the state through the lens of news and information. In five thematic chapters, the project undertakes a multidimensional study of the role of the gazette in the Qing court, territorial bureaucracy, and empire. The first chapter explores the evolution of Qing information policy from the Qing conquest through the empire’s decline in the nineteenth century. The second chapter establishes a detailed history of the evolution of the gazette industry and its relationship to the growth of commercial publishing in late imperial Beijing. The third chapter provides evidence for how readers engaged with the gazette in their daily lives and careers. The fourth chapter examines how the gazette found a place in newspapers published in China and around the world, and posits that gazette information shaped the stories that could be read about China, especially in the nineteenth century. Finally, the fifth chapter looks at efforts to reconceive the gazette at the end of the Qing as representative of ongoing elite-led efforts to remake relationships between print and politics in a modernizing state. Advisors: Tobie Meyer-Fong, William Rowe iii Acknowledgements In reflecting on the labors that have gone into this project, I must first express my heartfelt thanks to Bill Rowe and Tobie Meyer-Fong. Bill and Tobie welcomed me as a newcomer to the field, and consistently expressed incredible confidence in my ideas, research, and writing. Their thoughtful encouragement has made me now more enthusiastic, more assured, and more ambitious than I could have imagined at the start of this project. I could not have asked for more in my mentors. As scholars, too, I think Bill and Tobie set peerless examples for diligence, thoughtfulness, and collegiality. I hope to measure up to their example. I would like to express special gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee: Ho-fung Hung, Yulia Frumer, and Yumi Kim for reading my work and for their useful questions and suggestions for revision. Yulia and Yumi were especially supportive as I completed the writing and revisions. I must also reserve special thanks to Jordan Sand for supervising my field in Japanese history. I always enjoyed our meetings, and learned a great deal as well. The “Power of Place” seminar led by Mary Ryan and Nathan Connolly offered wonderful tutelage in recent and classic approaches to urban history. Mary was an especially generous field advisor to me. The East Asian Studies community is a hidden gem at Hopkins, and I am grateful to Erin Chung, Joel Andreas, Marta Hanson, and Victoria Cass for incisive feedback and entertaining conversations. Yuki Johnson offered enthusiastic and tolerant support of my work in Japanese language. Also at Hopkins, Gail Berninghausen, Tyree Powell, and Jessica Fedderly all supported my research and teaching behind the scenes at East Asian Studies. Megan iv Zeller and Rachel LaBozetta were always available to talk. Beyond that, they did much more than I know and I am grateful to them. I am also grateful to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and the Study Abroad Office for allowing me to live and teach in Nanjing. Thanks to Ningping Yu, a gracious and enthusiastic host in Nanjing. Before coming to graduate school, a year in Taipei supported by the Taiwan Ministry of Education helped me learn to read historical sources and I must thank Kevin Chang and especially Chung-han Kuo for their support and tutelage. Professor Constantin Fasolt both taught me about historiography and Wittgenstein and established me in Taipei. I must extend thanks to the staff at the institutions, archives, and libraries where I performed dissertation research. The Eisenhower Library introduced vast electronic and interlibrary-loan resources during my stay at Hopkins. Profuse thanks to Yunshan Ye for entertaining my numerous and willful library requests. The Library of Congress, Center for Research Libraries, and Gest Library at Princeton University opened up fantastic resources. I thank the staff of the Harvard Yenching Library for a special favor in the last days of dissertation writing. Patience and favors were bestowed on me by the staff in Beijing at the First Historical Archives, the National Library of China, Beijing University Library, Renmin University Library, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. I also incurred debts at the Shanghai Library, the Suzhou University Library, the Nanjing Library, and the National Palace Museum and Fu Ssu-nien Library in Taipei. I thoroughly enjoyed my research in London at the British Library, the SOAS Archives, the National Archives, and the Wellcome Collection. Special thanks to Graham Hutt and Sara Chiesura of the British Library. v During the dissertation process, a number of scholars generously commented on my papers and chapters and shared advice, sources, and work-in-progress with me, including Sarah Schneewind, Rudolf Wagner, Barbara Mittler, Eugenio Menegon, John Carroll, Cynthia Brokaw, James L. Hevia, Pierre-Étienne Will, Roger Thompson, John Dardess, Paize Keulemans, Tom Mullaney, Hilde De Weerdt, and Richard John. Beatrice Bartlett trusted me with both generous support and trenchant comments. I am grateful to mentors who seemed to know I was on the path to becoming a historian before I did. At Princeton High School, Greg Hand and Saladin Ambar taught me innovative and thorough approaches to history, and at the University of Chicago Michael Geyer taught me to take writing seriously. John Deak has offered witty guidance for many years now. Email exchanges with Ke Ren while I was still in Chicago convinced me to apply to Hopkins, and my conversations and adventures with Ke have been highlights in the past few years. Jack Bandy saved me from taking things too seriously and I hope I saved him too. Ting Zhang has been an exemplary colleague. I always look forward to seeing Ying Zhang’s smile. Xiaoqian Ji, Chien-wen Kung, and Zhang Yichi have been fantastic companions in our new reading room. I also want to thank Saeyoung Park, Amy Feng, and Ma Zhao for their advice and encouragement. I think of Liu Wenpeng of the Qing History Institute of Renmin University alongside my Hopkins colleagues, but he also supported my research in Beijing over the years with a smile and a meal whenever necessary. During my Fulbright year in Beijing, Weiwei Luo, Elizabeth Evans Weber, Xinxian Zheng, and Daniel Haussmann were special companions in Beijing’s libraries and archives and on weekend trips. Liu vi Shanshan reached out to me and became a special friend. I also want to thank Chelsea Wang, Devin Fitzgerald, Zhao Ying, and Lane Harris for sharing their work and exciting conversations about information in late imperial China with me. Hopkins colleagues are the best colleagues, and Hopkins wives are the best wives. Lauren MacDonald has been my sounding-board more times than she deserves. Ada Link kept me on pace in many ways. I had great times in London with Jessica Walker, Katherine Smoak, and Nick Radburn. Will Brown, Catherine Hinchliff, Christopher Consolino, Guillermo Garcia-Montufar, Katherine Bonil, Laura Thompson, Julia Cummiskey, Ren Pepitone, and Katie Hemphill have all been special friends. I am lucky to have friends who let me digress, escape, or just stay quiet, depending on the year.