qing.md

The Qing Success Story

• Manchu tribes, one of the descendants of Jurchen
• Manchuria in the 16th century had been brought under Chinese type of intensive agriculture only in the southernmost region
• The Ming had recognized the frontier nature of this region by organizing it in the military districts rather than under a civil administration only
• In their rise to power the Manchus took full advantage of their strategic position on a frontier where they could learn Chinese ways and yet not be entirely subjected to Chinese rule

The Manchu Conquest

• Conquered Korea on the east and made alliances with the Mongol tribes on the west
• Hong Taiji defeated the Khan of the Mongols and claimed to be the legitimate Khan of all Mongols
• In 1636 Hong Taiji gave the name Manchu to his people and proclaimed the Qing dynasty
• A written Manchu language had been developed from Mongolian script and some of the Chinese classics translated into it

Institutional Adaption

• In vigorous campaigns, the Manchus destroyed the rebels in the north and then took over the Lower Yangtze heartland
• They made use of Confucian rituals and precedents, showing a capacity of imperial ruthlessness
• The efficiency of Sino-barbarian rule was quickly proven
• The Manchu success where Chinese rebels had failed was essentially an achievement in the creation of political institutions

Eight Banner System

• The Manchu fighting men in eight divisions, each with a different flag or banner
• The "Eight Banner" was the basic social and military structure of the Manchu
• Early Han-Chinese and Mongols absorbed by the Manchu were ruled also in the Eight Banner system
• The emperor was not their father in Confucian style but rather their owner in the nomad style

Military

• The Manchus also sought to preserve themselves by maintaining their racial purity
• Lineage based on surnames and Eight Banners
• Manchu military control of China was maintained by establishment of banner garrisons at strategic points
• The only Chinese troops (Green Standard Army) given a recognized existence were provincial forces

Systematic Central Rule

• The imperial blood princes should be pensioned and given wealth but not allowed to become territorial lords
• Until 1860 the dynasty avoided government by empresses and by eunuchs
• The Manchus had established a Chinese style civil administration
  • Bureaucracy and Six Ministries a decade before its entrance into China
• In the civil administration of China, the Manchus used a system of dual appointments
  • Synarchism: both Chinese and Manchus (or Mongols) were placed in charge of important positions

Administration

• The Manchu rulers tried the preserve the Manchu language and created a Manchu documentation that was generally unavailable to Chinese officials
• The Imperial Household Department had its own treasury and was staffed by the emperor's bannermen bondservants
  • Which collected enormous revenues from lands, trade monopolies, customs taxes, loans, fines, and tributes
• In this way the Qing rulers preserved under their immediate control large resources beyond the reach of the civil administration
• Manchus attempted no social revolution
  • They slaughtered those who resisted but confirmed the status of Chinese gentry families if they accepted Qing rule
  • All male Chinese was required for distinctive Manchu tonsure: keeping their foreheads shaved and braiding their back hair in a queue (pig tail)

The Attempted Integration of Polity and Culture

Confucian Government

• Seeking the moral approval of the people governed, by rewards on aged and virtuous persons and punishments upon criminals
• The strategic elite stratum was the local leadership that began with roughly one million lower gentry or holders of 1st level degrees
• The Qing emperors paid personal efforts to educate the commoners with the Confucian doctrine

Popular Religion

• Deification of public figures in earlier time
  • Folk cults served to integrate the village with larger society, assert the social stability, and establish value system
• The promotion of state-approved cults was successful
  • By the mid-Qing, local gods had been effectively superseded by a handful of approved deities
• By approving what people accepted, the state strengthened its integration with the culture

Culture and Intellectuals

• Manchu emperors became great patrons of literature and sponsored enormous projects of criticism and compilation of Chinese texts
  • Energies of Chinese scholars were absorbed
• Increasingly the Manchu court used this vast book collection mechanism to conduct a literary inquisition
  • An effort was made to suppress all works that reflected badly on alien rulers
• The Qing Confucian scholars had no power base of their own except as they remained loyal to the ruler, who found their security lay in supporting orthodoxy
• Many outstanding Qing scholars therefore devoted themselves into textual criticism in which they could preserve the least of intellectual dignity and independence

The Jesuit Interlude

• The Ming-to-Qing dynastic transition in the first half of the 1600s coincided with the arrival of Europeans in East Asia by sea
• China's first contact with Europe was an extraordinarily fruitful interlude
  • The Jesuit missionaries were learned men capable of dealing with Chinese scholar-officials in intellectual terms
• The Jesuits' success to attract Chinese scholars' interests had been accomplished by a clever policy of "accommodation"
• They accepted early Confucianism as ancient ethics, attached only Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, and sanctioned their Christian converts' reverence for their ancestors as a "civil rite" comparable with Christian faith

Commerce and Foreign Relations

• Lack of interest in maritime trade and relations
  • The Qing gained control of the marginal caravan routes of dry and desert Central Asia
  • Meanwhile, Britain began to conquer the world's seas at a higher level of power altogether
• Government playing only a minor role in the mid-Qing era of high civilization
• Commercialization continued active as did privatization of business

The Paradox of Growth without Development

Rise in Population

• An estimated population of 60 millions as of AD 2 mid-Han had been matched roughly the same figure in mid-Tang
  • A thousand years of ups and downs with only a modest overall increase in population
• From 1741 to 1851 (Qing era), the annual figures rose steadily and spectacularly from 143 million to 432 million
• The introduction of sweet potatoes in hill slope, maizes in dry soil, like potatoes did in England and Ireland
• Recently some speculated the global warming of the climate in early modern times lengthened the growing session

Diminishing Returns of Farm Labor

• The late imperial era saw a decline of productivity per laborer in agriculture
• All the great Chinese inventions, which were make Chinese a leading nation in world's technology, came generally to an end in the Song
• Without technological improvement, the production could not be increased
• China's loss on the land in the per capita productivity of her farm labor force was intensified by the artificial weakening of her women power, through the practice of foot-binding

Domestic Trade and Commercial Organization

• The occurrence of associations in various provincial centers to accommodate merchants and others who shared the same place of origin
• The growth of trade led to improvements in fiscal technology
  • The Shanxi remittance banks developed a capacity to transfer funds by letters of credit and orders on their branches elsewhere so as to prevent the cross-county shipment of silver bullion under convoy against bandits
  • Other innovations included bills of exchange, deposit banking, book transfers of funds between depositors, overdraft credit and negotiable and transferable credit instruments
• The admirable commercial growth in late imperial China unfortunately occurred in a context that enmeshed both farmer and merchant in a long-established situation that they could not easily change
• Late imperial China's commercialization was not followed by industrialization on the Western model

Merchant-Official Symbiosis

• The merchant class subjected to the arbitrary requirements from officials
  • Contributions for meeting crisis like floods or defense
  • Gifts from holders of license, monopolies, and properties
• Industrial investment by merchants continued to take second place to their investment in land and real estate
  • Official disregard for rights of private property
  • Result in a close community of interest between merchants and the officials
• Merchants could move with same ease into gentry class through (1) purchase of land (2) examination degrees (3) inter-marriage
  • The merchant class produced landlords more readily than independent capitalists
• China's pre-modern financial system also inhibited capitalism
  • In pre-modern China, the merchant had an attitude of mind quite different from that of the Western entrepreneur
  • The bureaucracy lived by what we today would call systematized corruption, which sometimes became extortion

The Manchu's experience

• The Manchu luckily defeated and ruled the huge numbers of Han Chinese
• They extremely respected and protected the Confucianism in order to won the support and obedience
• They "behave more Chinese than Chinese"
• Afraid of changing or challenging the Confucianism

Limitations of the Law

• Imperial China had a well-developed legal system
  • However, it was of little help of fostering capitalism
  • The Chinese concept of law was fundamentally different from legal conception of the West
  • The Chinese imperial code was chiefly penal, a corrective for the uneducated
  • It was also administrative - for the government's interest
• The magistrates hired personal law secretaries to advise them
  • Aside from these there was no legal profession, no private lawyer class
  • Justice was official, weighted on the side of the state and social order
• The Qing legal system was elaborately organized, and it functioned with a good deal of exactitude
  • Cases and sentences of serious punishments should be reported to and reviewed by superiors, and appeals could be made
  • Magistrates were under deadlines to catch criminals and could be severely disciplined for wrong judgements
  • Penalties for the same act varied according to the social and especially the kinship status of the actors
• Since formal law mainly served the interests of the state, private or civil law remained only informally developed in this legal system

Frontier Unrest and the Opening of China

The Weakness of State Leadership

• The one thing essential for the industrialization of the late-comers like Japan or Russia was government leadership
• Unfortunately in 19th century China, government grew weaker and more myopic just when its strength and foresight were needed
• Three motifs dominated China's experience in 19th century
  • Domestic rebellion, i.e. the Taiping Rebellion
  • Foreign invasion lead to ceding territory and paying indemnities
  • Efforts of the ruling elite to control and preserve their rule