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State Versus Gentry in Early Qing Dynasty China, 1644-1699

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State Versus Gentry in Early Qing Dynasty China, 1644-1699 STATE VERSUS GENTRY IN EARLY QING DYNASTY CHINA, 1644-1699 HARRY MILLER State versus Gentry in Early Qing Dynasty China, 1644– 1699 This page intentionally left blank State versus Gentry in Early Qing Dynasty China, 1644– 1699 by Harry Miller STATE VERSUS GENTRY IN EARLY QING DYNASTY CHINA, 1644– 1699 Copyright © Harry Miller, 2013. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-46255-1 ISBN 978-1-137-33406-0 (eBook) DOI 10.105 7/9781137334060 Miller, Harry, 1966– State versus gentry in early Qing dynasty China, 1644– 1699 / by Harry Miller. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978- 1- 137- 33405- 3 (alkaline paper) 1. Elite (Social sciences)— China— History— 17th century. 2. Gentry— China— History— 17th century. 3. China— History— Qing dynasty, 1644– 1912. 4. China— Social conditions— 17th century. 5. China— Politics and government— 1644– 1912. I. Title. HN740.Z9E4617 2013 306.0951— dc23 2013002157 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: July 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Aliceanna This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The Dorgon Regency, 1644– 1650 15 2 The Shunzhi Emperor, 1651– 1661 47 3 The Oboi Regency, 1661– 1669 79 4 The Kangxi Emperor, 1669– 1699 107 Epilogue 133 Notes 139 Bibliography 157 Index 167 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Research for this book was conducted mostly in Taiwan, with gener- ous support from the University of South Alabama Research Council and from the Phi Alpha Theta History Society. I am also grateful to the University of South Alabama for awarding me a sabbatical. In Taiwan, I was graciously hosted by the Center for Chinese Studies at the National Central Library as well as by the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica. For all their helpful interest in my project, I am grateful to Keng Li- chun, Lilly Wu, and Chien Yueh- lien at the Center for Chinese Studies and to Chen Hsi- yuan, Chiu Peng- sheng, and Kevin Chang of Academic Sinica. Lin Li-yueh and Cheng Wing- cheong continue to help me around the research scene in Taiwan. I am also very grateful to Chen Li- shu, William Hsu, and Michael Hsu, together with Jack Chung, Li Yuan- fen, their children, Carol and George, and their extended families for their valuable friendship and practical assistance. Xia Weizhong and Chen Yunqian of Nanjing University were kind enough to organize a field trip to Gaochun County on the main- land, where I was pleased to meet the local historians Xing Huaping and Xing Huapu. Special thanks are due to Jane Liau, Peter Chen- main Wang, and Hsu Yi- chih for their extraordinary assistance in tracking down rare sources after my return to the United States. Debbie Cobb and Sonja Sheffield of the University of South Alabama’s interlibrary loan department were invaluable in getting the sources to me. Sara Schnee- wind, Peter Bol, William Rowe, Ted Farmer, and Murray Rubinstein read drafts of some of these chapters and provided many useful com- ments. I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of South Alabama for their general support as well as Chris Chappell and Sarah Whalen at Palgrave Macmillan for their continued interest in my endeavors. All errors in this book are my own responsibility. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Yuka, for her boundless indulgence and patience. Introduction The predecessor to this volume, State versus Gentry in Late Ming Dynasty China, 1572– 1644, argued that the rise of commerce and its attendant social fluidity in the sixteenth century compelled many members of China’s amalgamated scholar-gentry bureaucratic elite to take refuge in one of two philosophical sureties: a chauvinistic Legal- ism, which insisted that sovereignty resided in the imperial state; or an equally fundamentalist Confucianism, which held that sovereignty resided with the gentry class itself. While individuals proceeded to band together in cliques, either as zealous operatives of the state or as gentlemanly civilizers of it, the Ming dynasty (1368– 1644) lost its governmental effectiveness and, with it, its capacity for dealing with internal and external threats. The Ming finally succumbed to both, eviscerated by roving bandits of the interior and then finished off by alien Manchus from north of the Great Wall. The new Manchu, or Qing, dynasty (1644– 1911) would be engaged in the difficult task of reconstruction for most of the latter half of the seventeenth century. As the new dynasty labored to establish itself and restore order, it grappled with many of the same bureaucratic, fiscal, and other diffi- culties that had doomed its predecessor. The questions therefore raise themselves: Did the dispute over sovereignty, which had played such a huge role in the unraveling of the Ming, continue to rage in the early years of the Qing? Furthermore, if nonresolution of the controversy had proved fatal to the former regime, did the settlement of it herald the success of the latter one? As the present study will show, the issue of sovereignty did continue to dominate Chinese statecraft well into the new dynasty. Indeed, the vicissitudes of early Qing politics followed nearly seamlessly the late Ming pattern of a sine wave or swinging pendulum as alternat- ing subregimes, favoring either the state’s or the gentry’s interests, exchanged the initiative. The narrative of the Ming-Qing transition offered here is one of basic continuity, with a new dynasty stepping onto the shoes of the old one in 1644 to fight the same see-saw battle. As was the case in the Ming, the state and the gentry continued to 2 State versus Gentry in Early Qing Dynasty China be complex, overlapping entities. While emperors, court aristocrats, and bannermen (a special group of officials peculiar to the Qing, to be discussed in what follows) were inherent parts of the state, the rest of the historical actors in this book belonged to a hybrid class whose individual members could take the part of the gentry or of the state. Often known as scholar- officials, these personages are more accurately labeled scholar- gentry- officials, reflecting their advanced education, ownership of landed estates, and qualification for bureaucratic service. To avoid the clumsy overuse of hyphens, individual scholar- gentry- officials will sometimes here be referred to according to the weight they assigned to the different parts of their identities, which was a subjective, not institutional, determination. For example, a man such as Wu Weiye (1609– 1671), who will be discussed in Chapter 2, always saw himself as a member of the gentry, despite his becoming a min- ister of state. Others, such as Wang Yun (1619– 1693?), who appears in Chapter 4, identified reflexively with the state, though holding no official post at all. Absent any class differences or institutional loy- alties, the conflict among the various scholar- gentry- officials was philosophical: they surged against each other in the abstract, with par- tisans embracing the idea of state or gentry ascendency but (usually) without actual violence between the state and the gentry. In this basic sense, then, late Ming and early Qing factional strife was of a piece, with the same central issue, the same kinds of participants, and the same alternating rhythm. Summary of the Late Ming Context Since the context of late-Ming partisanship is so essential for under- standing the vicissitudes of early Qing history, a brief synopsis of what has gone on before would probably be beneficial, especially for those readers unfamiliar with this book’s Ming prequel. The state’s and the gentry’s struggle for sovereignty began in 1572, when the domineer- ing minister Zhang Juzheng (1525–1582) became the de facto regent for the young Wanli emperor (r. 1572– 1620) and began fighting obsessively to assert the symbolic prerogatives of the imperial state. In diverse policy areas such as education, personnel selection, tax collec- tion, and even tax relief, Zhang worked to ensure that the state was always seen to be calling the shots. On the receiving end of Zhang’s zeal were the equally self-conscious leaders of China’s Confucian- educated scholar- gentry- officials, who were accustomed to believe that they themselves knew what was best in such matters and pre- ferred to shape policy as an informal fellowship of gentry. To Zhang, introduction 3 they were insubordinate and effectively treasonous, “willing to resist the edicts of the Court but unwilling to resist peer pressure, willing to violate the laws of the government but unwilling to refuse a private request,” and he palpably despised them. Although, like his rivals, he was trained in Confucianism himself, Zhang occasionally used Legalist phrases to reiterate the irreconcilable conflict between the state and the gentry, such as, “Private families are becoming daily richer, while the public house is daily poorer.” Zhang drew lines of opposition in the sand of China’s ancient political culture, just as the bulk of China’s elite in the socially jumbled world of the sixteenth century, wondering what they stood for, also tried to find their feet there.
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