In the Qing Dynasty, the prefecture-level governments that directly manage the people were of great significance in the governance system of the dynasty countries. In the more than 1,400 prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty, what procedures are used to choose officials of prefectures and counties, how the administrative operations of local governments and grassroots governance are carried out, how the officials, gentry and people interact in the way, and what state of the lives of the lower class people, Professor Liu Zhengyun from the Institute of History and Languages of the Central Academy of Research, has an in-depth discussion on these important issues in the history of the country.
The book is divided into three parts: "The politics of the Qing Dynasty in the archives", "The society of the Qing Dynasty in the archives" and "Archives and History Research". It contains 19 papers, covering topics such as the local vocational system in the Qing Dynasty, the baojia and grassroots governance of rural areas, population, associations, education schools, gangs, vendors, husband and wife relationships, as well as the history and current status of archives sorting in the Qing Dynasty. The author's consistent academic care is to discuss the grassroots society of the Qing Dynasty from the institutional level. These papers were published between 1985 and 2015, and can be regarded as the crystallization of relevant research by the author over the past 30 years. The author believes that the book is written based on solid archival historical materials, and has reflected on the pros and cons of the historical materials, and has new insights on a series of basic issues such as the central government and other provinces, imperial power and bureaucracy, local administration and grassroots governance, and the relationship between officials, gentry and the people. It is a masterpiece that should not be ignored. The following author will review the important topics of this book and the use of historical materials.
"History in Archives: Politics and Society of the Qing Dynasty", Beijing Normal University Press, "Chinese Scholars Series", June 2017 edition, 527 pages, 88.00 yuan
"Breaking, complex, tired, difficult" system and local personnel rights
0 "Breaking, complex, tired, difficult" system are the key mechanisms for understanding local administration and personnel appointments and removals in the Qing Dynasty, and are also an important clue of this book. It has appeared many times in the related analysis of local administration and population activities. There were more than 1,400 prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty, and there was a big gap between them, including the traditional and simple parts and the difficulty of governance. However, most of the prefectures and county officials were new to the official career and lacked administrative experience. How to assign officials to different places according to their abilities is obviously an important link in the design of the political system, which has greatly influenced local administration in the Qing Dynasty. The establishment of this system is directly related to the fact that the Guangxi governor Jin Hui, requesting to determine the ranks of prefectures and counties according to the four words "storm, complexity, fatigue and difficulty" and select officials.
Jin Hui pointed out that there are differences in size in prefectures and counties, and there are differences in officials' virtuousness and mediocrity. However, the customization of the selection of prefectures and county officials on that day was selected by the Ministry of Personnel in the capital and the number of missing items was selected by the lottery. But this method is just to pursue fairness mechanically, so that "there is no reason to distinguish those with outstanding talents, or to obtain important positions by mediocre people" frequently occur. In order to achieve "the mutual adaptability of people and land", that is, "those who are talented must be short, and those who are short of talent always need to be short of their ability", Jin Hui suggested the following two points. First, use the four words "rush, complexity, fatigue and difficulty" to determine the importance of the shortage of prefectures and counties. It refers to the location of a major transportation road, complex refers to the heavy government affairs, fatigue refers to the lack of taxes, and difficulty refers to the frequent occurrence of people's ruthless and vulgar and robbery cases. In other words, the new law will determine the level of missing points based on transportation, government affairs, taxation and public security. Second, follow the previous examples of adjusting the complexity and simplification, and give the provincial governors and governors greater personnel power. The "necessary" places will be selected by the governors and governors from the officials of the provinces and counties, and the "often missing" places will be assigned to the "necessary" people who have just entered the official position. This new law was recognized by Emperor Yongzheng. He believed that by carefully selecting talents through the governor’s and governor’s questions, the effect of matching people and land will be beneficial to local affairs.
In the political operation of the Qing Dynasty, when the memorials of other provinces were submitted to the imperial court, they usually had to be approved by relevant departments before they could be truly implemented. Jin Huizhi's proposal was not until the end of the ninth year of Yongzheng nearly four years later that the Ministry of Personnel issued a reply. The reason for this is that the agreement between the various provinces is quite time-consuming. More importantly, this process implies the competition between the central government and other provinces for local personnel rights. The method agreed by the Ministry of Revenue generally maintains the basic spirit of the Jinxiong memorial, but the specific implementation methods have been greatly improved, that is, the power to adjust and replenish the governor and governor has been greatly reduced.
Jin Ke suggested that any place where there are conflict, complex, tired, and difficult, whether it is specialized, or both, or all, will be selected and adjusted in the prefectures and counties to which it belongs. Only those who have no words and lack (i.e., those who have no four items of conflict, complexity, fatigue and difficulty) will be selected by the Ministry of Personnel. According to the author's statistics, Jian's negligence accounts for only one-fifth of all the negligences, that is, nearly 80% of the negligences will be adjusted by the governor and governor outside. The Ministry of Revenue, on the grounds that "there are too many shortcomings in other provinces and the current subordinates are not enough to select and subsidize", agreed that only if all four items are complete or three items are complete (roughly equivalent to the "most important lack" and "necessary lack") will be transferred and substituted by the governor. The remaining ones or two items are still selected by the Ministry of Personnel for monthly selection, and the opinion will eventually be finalized. The author found that under this system, the average proportion of the governors and governors of the 18 provinces, that is, the most important and shortage of all staff, is about 28%. Comparing the differences between the two solutions, it can be seen that the fundamental crux of the problem is the distribution of personnel power between the central government and other provinces, and the Ministry of Personnel is never willing to give up the right to vote.
However, interestingly, this is not just a struggle between the Ministry of Personnel and the Governor or the Central and Local Governments. The author introduced imperial power over this in the analysis, making the relevant pictures more rich and vivid. He found that after the agreement in the ninth year of Yongzheng, the Ministry of Personnel seemed to have the upper hand, but the competition between the two sides did not stop. The governor still directly fights against the emperor for individual members by illegally requesting questions. If the original department is selected or requesting an order to the governor’s question is missing, or if the question is not in line with the question is transferred to the official who is not in line with the rules, please transfer the officials who are not in line with the rules. Although not every question can be obtained as you wish, the governor still asks you from time to time in order to obtain the approval of the "special order".
This is certainly to maintain the flexibility of the system, but more importantly, to declare the supremacy of imperial power. The author commented that in the mind of the autocratic monarch, the window of "special case" must always exist, otherwise it would not be the emperor. Based on this, this book's reflection on the relationship between the monarch and the ministers under the autocratic system of the Qing Dynasty is also quite inspiring: every time the governor and governor violates the rules, it is a unique interaction between the monarch and the ministers. There is no definite number of the emperor's accuracy or refutation, but it depends on various complex factors at that time, including his personal relationship with the governor and other local subjective and objective factors. Therefore, when the emperor insists that any regulations can be exceptions because of his "special order", the governor will naturally make good use of them to expand his control over local personnel. And such policies are believed to be not only used on personnel issues. (Page 150)
It is a bit regrettable that the main body involved in the new system of overcoming difficulties, prefectures and county officials, have hardly appeared in this study. For them, what it means to be an official in a prefecture and county with different ranks of vacancies and how the new system affects their behavior in the officialdom may still require further discussion.
Baojia and grassroots governance in rural areas
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the formal state administrative agencies were generally only at the prefecture and county level. The government was relatively "lax" for grassroots society below the county level, and mainly relied on various intermediaries such as village servants, gentry, and clans to govern. At the level of rules and regulations, the grassroots governance in the Qing Dynasty was based on the Baojia and Lijia systems. Literally speaking, the former is intended to prevent theft from public security, while the latter focuses on supervising the urge for money and food. It is generally believed that since the Qianlong period, Baojia gradually replaced Lijia. For a long time, our understanding of this system mainly comes from political books, and the relevant research institutes mostly present paper-based chapters.
The contribution of this book is to use relevant records in the archives of the cabinet in the Qing Dynasty (mostly confessions of criminal cases) to give a detailed description of the grassroots practices of the Lijia and Baojia systems. The author found that not only the three-level Bao-A-card system in Baojia Preliminary Chapter varies from time to place to person in practice, but there are various names. Moreover, some township officers ("local general", "general general" and "local") have combined the functions of the two, and it is difficult to distinguish whether they belong to the Lijia or Baojia system. The author keenly pointed out that this type of chaos in the name is due to the fact that the central government does not mandate regulations and requirements for how local governments implement the rules and regulations of Baojia and Lijia, and the local officials' interest in dispatching services through the township insurance department is much greater than the care of supervising money and urging money and stolen money and stolen money. Therefore, it is irrelevant whether the two are different in terms of organizational names.At the same time, the author also pointed out that the baojia chief in the countryside has become the agent of the prefectures and counties and plays an important role in local administration. However, rural service generally did not allow others, "there were few loyal people and many cunning people", and the government did not allow the inclusion of fame and honor into the Baojia system. The problems caused by this persisted for a long time in the Qing Dynasty.
The author believes that using rich archival historical materials to examine the names and reality of the Baojia and Lijia systems has its own value. Before this book, Huang Zongzhi, Wang Fuming and Li Huaiyin used "Shuntianfu Archives" and "Huolu County Archives" respectively to give a clear explanation of the roles and functions of the Baodi township and Huolu Township. The two counties are in Zhili, but the levels and numbers of their villages are quite different: the most important township in Baodi is the township guarantee between counties and villages, with an average of about twenty villages per person; while the Huolu only has village-level village land, and each person is generally responsible for one village. This shows that the Baojia and Lijia systems in the Qing Dynasty can have quite different forms of expression in local society, and rebuilding the role and function of the rural service was the key to understanding the relevant systems. Luo Zhitian also concluded that the establishment of township officials and village servants in previous dynasties mostly showed a "big" state where there is here but there is no place, where it is called A and where it is called B. Because "old customs" often transcend "customization", it should be interpreted openly in "localization".
Going further, if you can break out of the framework of rules and regulations, change your perspective, and think about the logic of using township servants to conduct academic sects, you may have a deeper understanding of the Baojia and Lijia systems. In the traditional imperial era, in order to maintain its operation, the dynasty countries organized all households and people to form a group of households and people, so that they could provide various resources, namely, to undertake service and pay money and grain. This is the mechanism behind the Baojia and Lijia systems.
As a "fight for the people", the township baojia chief was recommended or ordered to receive the replenishment. The "Qing Dynasty Literature Collection" described his functions as:
He was responsible for internal taxes, owed food, disputes between land and houses, litigation, thieves, and murder case trials, all are responsible. If there are any equipment needed by the officer, order them to urge them; if the husband is in use, order them to take charge of the supervisor. If you make a mistake, you will be punished immediately and run around all year round and have less time.
Supervising money urges, litigation of public security, etc. is the basic responsibility of the township service. However, its more important and more practical task is to undertake various legal and surgical corps such as labor service. Under the highly centralized financial system in the Qing Dynasty, local government yamen at all levels did not have sufficient official funds, and their tools and husbands were all distributed to the neighborhoods in the form of labor services (usually a monetary burden). Township servants run between officials and the people, and are responsible for urging, collecting and paying money, especially labor service. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the basic structure of prefecture and county governments using township services to obtain resources was generally the same. This was the case with the village chief and grain chief in the Ming Dynasty, and the same was true for the village chief and local government in the Qing Dynasty. However, whether it is the system design of "urged to collect money and grain, and recruited public affairs", or the practice of using the help of the township service department to assign labor services, they are all institutional components of the "system" of Baojia and Lijia.
Since he is responsible for the legal surgeon, the rural servants naturally take the opportunity to seek personal gain. However, for most people, being able to be a village contract, village chief, family chief, and security chief are still hard work that they are afraid to avoid. The traditional Chinese town pavilion position was generally bounded by the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Previously, most of them were town officials with official ranks and salary. Since then, their status and status have gradually declined, similar to servants. The rural service in the Qing Dynasty was naturally a lowly "official service". Gentlemen with fame and fame were not allowed to be replaced by rural service. This was both custom and normal. The Baojia Chief in the hometown may not be the head of a village or a village, and his role may not be a process of "returning to an official" (relevant remarks may be just the difference between institutional design and practice). If you regard it as a "local elite" or "quasi-official official", you will inevitably have a misunderstanding.
Wang Fuming and Huang Zongzhi's research on Baodi Township Guard has revealed that township insurance is generally held by middle-aged and lower-middle households and even unemployed poor people. They are just the transmitters of the orders of the county government and usually use their relationship with the government to abuse their power in the township and seek personal gain. Township guarantees are recommended by gentry and other people, and replacements are generally more frequent. However, the recommended person is relatively fixed. It can be seen that the network of gentry behind the village service controls grassroots society by manipulating the front office.In other words, rural servants are small figures elected by powerful figures such as gentry and exist as buffers to deal with national demands. This system design has its own shortcomings, which is the problem of low quality of rural service discussed by Huang Liuhong and Hu Zehuang in this book. But its positive significance, as Fei Xiaotong said, the village service exists as the end of the top-down track and the buffer between officials and the people, so that local leaders such as gentry do not directly deal with the yamen, but can exert their influence through the bottom-up track. He believes that once the gentry is included in the Baojia system and becomes a village servant, it will inevitably lead to "rigidity in grassroots administration."
The author believes that at least before the early 20th century, the low-ranking village servants as the institutional intermediary for grassroots governance did not include gentry with fame and fame. It seems that "the court is unwilling to face up to the problem that Baojia is unable to grow up for a long time", but more like an active institutional design or a governance practice that both the officials and the people are willing to do. Of course, the pros and cons of this design have always been reflected on many aspects, and restoring the township officials is a common proposal.
Regarding the grassroots governance of the Qing Dynasty, whether summarized by "dual-track politics", "rural ethnic autonomy under the authorization of the government" or "simplified centralization of centralization", its general picture is, on the one hand, the central government has a high degree of centralization over local governments (centralization is in principle and form, and there is always decentralization under centralization). On the other hand, the society below prefectures and counties is relatively "leniency" and relies on various intermediary organizations to govern, including rural vassals included in the system, as well as seemingly "autonomous" gentry, clans, etc. It is necessary for us to understand the rationality of this governance practice and its pros and cons from the perspective of people at that time. It is also necessary to reconstruct the logic of power distribution and function connection between officials and people and between people in specific historical scenarios. For example, how Baojia and Lijia, as official organizations, are entangled with various blood and geopolitical organizations and form the basis of local society still needs to be promoted in individual cases from different regions.
The Qing Dynasty Congress and local politics
If the people involved in Baojia and Lijia are still under the control of the government, then the associations that account for a considerable amount of space in this book belong to groups outside the order. The Society was an omnipresent social force in the Qing Dynasty and modern society, and was also an important organization that was difficult to avoid in related research narratives. Because of its connection with politics and revolution, the association party has always attracted the attention of researchers. However, due to the influence of revolutionary historical concepts and the limitations of materials, whether it is Tiandihui or Gelaohui, it is either regarded as an anti-Qing group or a revolutionary organization. The research focus of scholars therefore focuses on the anti-Qing, xenophobia, revolution and other activities of individual societies.
As early as 1985, Mr. Chen Xulu reflected on the study of the Society from the perspective of social history and proposed: In the past, we mostly discussed the existence of the Society from the perspective of political contradictions and political struggles. "It can be said that they only discussed them when they committed crimes and rose up. At most, they talked about the social background from the occurrence of events, and rarely studied from the perspective of social structure and social history." Around the same time, the author of this book completed his doctoral thesis on the Late Qing Ge Lao Society at the University of Pittsburgh in 1983, and has since published a series of related research. It has become an important topic of this book to examine the association party and its role in local politics in the Qing Dynasty from the aspects of social structure, organizational form and activity trajectory.
The Qing Dynasty's Congress took the swornship of different surnames as an organizational form, originated in the early Qing Dynasty. Since Qianlong, its activities have entered an active period. Since the mid-Qing Dynasty, the Society has become one of the most important social organizations outside of blood and business groups. The author gave an explanation from a social and economic perspective on this time point and organizational form, believing that the increase in population pressure in the middle of the Qing Dynasty was directly related to the emergence of a large number of immigrants, and the formation of the participating parties. For example, during the Qianlong period of the 18th century, Hulu, which was active in , Sichuan and other places, was a predatory group composed of marginal groups such as immigrants and hired workers. The most representative association during the Tongzhi and Guangxu periods was the Gelao Association active in Lianghu, Sichuan and other places. According to archival historical materials, most of its members are marginal figures in society: scattered soldiers, wandering brave men, unemployed wanderers, down-and-out literati, monks and Taoists who wandered around the world.These people are not all immigrants, but due to their high mobility, they have lost the support of traditional families and geopolitical groups. For the sake of their own safety and life needs, they have formed a blood-related group called for helping each other and not being bullied by others, and formed a sworn group in a different surname.
For example, the confession of a member of a certain Tiandihui Society said:
is about to join this society, because there is marriage and funeral, and it can help and contribute money; if you fight with others, you can help and work hard; if you are robbed, you will not violate each other when you hear the secret code of the same church; in the future, you can get rewards from others. Although
is self-protection and mutual assistance, their way of existence is extremely destructive. From gathering people to accumulate money, robbery, abducting people to redeem, smuggling and selling drugs, prostitution, gambling, to sacrificing flags and attacking the government offices, they did almost everything. Later, they participated in revolutionary activities, which became an extremely difficult problem for local officials at that time.
The World Society in Jin Yong’s martial arts
Therefore, the author emphasized that population pressure and economic demands are the main reasons for the emergence and development of the Qing Dynasty’s Congress. They are not anti-Qing groups or revolutionary organizations. This is actually an old issue about the nature of the Congress. In fact, the combination of political anti-Qing goals and economic mutual aid needs (not necessarily legitimate) has enabled organizations such as Tiandihui and Gelaohui to survive for a long time in the Qing Dynasty society. But as the author said, in addition to political reasons, it is also necessary to look at the Qing Dynasty's association from a social and economic perspective. For example, it is worth noting that the association party aimed at anti-Qing still grew secretly after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, which was supported by economic demand.
In addition, the important contribution of this book is to make a holistic analysis and judgment on the time and space distribution of the Qing Dynasty's congress party activities using huge archival historical materials. On the other side of the strait, we focus on excavating archives, comparing the time and place of the emergence of the association party, and analyzing the social background and ecological environment of its activities. Zhuang Jifa's research has been the pioneer (see his "Research on the History of Secret Associations in the Qing Dynasty"). The author of this book has collected archives, newspapers, magazines, political books and essays from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and sorted out 919 cases of the big and small associations. Based on these big data of the crimes committed by the conspiracy, the author's analysis appears solid and ingenious.
For example, this book found that among the 840 cases that show the name of the meeting, the Ge Laohui is the most 222, the Tiandihui is the second, the Three Points is the second, the Three Points is the second, the Three Points is the second, the Three Points is the second, the Three Points is the seventy-three percent of the total, and the rest is at most 20. It can be seen that although the Qing Dynasty's congress party names are numerous, the only ones that are truly active in the historical stage are the Tiandihui, the Sandiaohui and the Gelaohui. When it was active, it started until the Yongzheng Dynasty, and the most prominent were the Jiaqing , Xianfeng and the Guangxu and Xuantong dynasties, while the rest of the dynasties were relatively gentle. Among them, the first two sections are the main activity periods of the Tiandihui, while the latter section is the Gelaohui as the main character.
Also, the geographical distribution of the party uprising of the author's county statistics association is also a very innovative discussion. He found that the activities of the Tiandihui and Sandiaohui are mostly found in Lingnan, the southeast coast, and the upper reaches of the Ganjiang River, while the Gelaohui is concentrated in the middle, lower reaches of the Yangtze River and lower reaches of the Ganjiang River. As for the activity traces in each area, the author once again introduced the four-character decisions of "rush", "complexity", "tired" and "difficulty". He found that the emergence of the association's problems has a lot to do with the ranks of jobs in a place. Overall, the more busy political affairs ("complex") and traffic jams ("continuation"), the more the gathering place for the associations. In addition, there are many places where people are tough and theft cases are frequent ("difficult"), and there are many examples of crimes committed by the association party. On the contrary, if the local area is not rich enough and often owes taxes ("fatigue"), the incidence of party aggression will be reduced. Specifically, the revival locations of the Tiandihui and Sandiaohui are mostly remote locations, low political affairs, and strong people's sentiments; while the Gelaohui is more active in core areas that are more important in politics and economy.
Then compare the time and space factors. It is not difficult to find that over time, the focus of the Qing Dynasty's congressional issues has shifted from the Tiandihui in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the Lingnan in the Sandianhui, and the southeast coastal areas to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the Gelaohui in the late Qing Dynasty. At the same time, the Association has also developed from marginal and remote areas to core areas, namely places with concentrated population, busy political affairs, and key transportation.
However, despite frequent uprisings and gradually developing towards the core area, the mobilization ability of the Qing Dynasty Congress was limited after all. For example, the most influential Gelao Society, apart from regional commotion, did not launch a major movement that had been involved in dozens of provinces like the White Lotus Sect and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. What is the reason? This book examines the Li Hong incident, a premature uprising of the Gelaohui in the 17th year of Guangxu (1891), can provide an answer to this. Li Hong was the son of Li Shizhong, a surrendered general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. In order to avenge the Qing court's murder of his father, he contacted the leader of the Gelaohui in the upper and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and prepared to launch an uprising in Shashi, Hubei in that year. However, because the arms purchased by Charles A. Mason, a British man who prepared ammunition and worked in Zhenjiang Customs, was intercepted, and the plan for the uprising was exposed, Li Hong and his party members were arrested one after another.
The author found that although Li Hong was a member of the Ge Laohui, he had no one of his own. However, with his own financial resources, he contacted and mobilized more than 20 mountain halls from Hubei, Jiangsu, Anhui and Jiangxi to participate in the uprising through the leader of the association, Long Songnian Mountain Hall. Despite this, Li Hong's Revenge Alliance is just a loose mountain hall alliance. These mountain halls can "entangle each other and have a voice in communication" and are based on the personal swornship relationship of the leader of the society, not the connection between the organization. The author believes that in the Qing Dynasty, there seemed to be no Gelao Huishan Hall that could accumulate enough human and material resources, so that personal interpersonal relationships could break through regional restrictions. Every time the Gelao Club members arrive at a new place, they must contact local forces, form mountain halls together, or join new organizations to establish new interpersonal relationships in order to receive protection. In the case where organizational operations depend entirely on personal interpersonal relationships, it goes without saying that the organizational mobilization ability of Ge Laohui is weak. This situation is not limited to the Gelao Society, but the common phenomenon of all Qing Dynasty congresses. Even folk religions of the same period, such as the Zhili Laoli Church examined by the author, have similar organizational operation logic.
Despite the limited cross-regional organizational and mobilization capabilities, the Qing Dynasty Congress has become an important force in local politics. In this book's investigation on the Zhejiang Pingyang and Ruian Money Club incidents during the occasion of Xiantong, the author reveals the complex interaction between the association party and local officials and gentry in local politics in Qing Dynasty. In the late Xianfeng period, Zhao Qi and others launched a money meeting in the name of resisting the Taiping Army. Because Pingyang's magistrate was valued, the power of the association expanded greatly, and the members gradually grew from "rogue children" to "those who have wealth but no power". Lower gentry also joined the congregation, with about 10,000 people, and were even assigned to the regiment training by local officials. On the other hand, since the fourth year of Xianfeng, Sun Qiangming, a civil gentry member who was a member of Guangxi scholar-officials, was ordered to build Anyi Fort to handle the group training. Because the group's brave clothes were white cloth, it was called the white cloth meeting. In the late Xianfeng period, the Money Association and the White Bun Association became local groups that confront each other. In June of the 11th year of Xianfeng, Zhao Qi and others looted Dong Fuhu of the regiment and attacked Sun Qianming's Anyi Fort, and then captured Fuding County, attacked Wenzhou Prefecture twice, surrounded Ruian County for more than a month, and were pacified by the first month of the first year of Tongzhi, which was a case of the Money Club.
The author found that the conflict between the Society of the Money Association and the League Training White Temperature Association was actually the result of the confrontation between the two local forces. The Money Club represents the interests of some Pingyang and Ruian Gentlemen. The latter is limited by financial and manpower and has to win over the Money Club to compete with some Ruian Gentlemen led by Sun Qianming. Therefore, they not only lobby local officials, but also incorporated money into the group training, but even came forward for the meeting after the incident, in order to retain its strength. It can be seen that "bandit" organizations such as the Society have room for survival not only in the local society of the Qing Dynasty, but also in the gentry class. In order to win their own interests, the gentry will also deal with the parties and seek cooperation.
On the other hand, the aftermath of the money club incident is also quite thought-provoking. In Sun Qianming's view, Zhao Qi and others' behavior was a complete gathering of people to plot against, which was entirely caused by the foolishness of Wenzhou local officials. However, the prefectures and counties believe that the reason why money will cause trouble is that "it is actually the result of the gentry group Meng Lang's success." Although Sun was ordered to handle the group training in the township, he was ordered to stop because of his contrary position to the local officials. Not only was his home destroyed, but he was also regarded as the culprit for causing trouble.
The author reminded that Sun Qianming's experience has given considerable inspiration to understand the role of the gentry in the Qing Dynasty in local society. Many scholars have found that since the mid-19th century, the autonomy of gentry in local affairs has greatly improved, which is marked by the emergence of unofficial institutions such as guild halls, offices, and charity halls. William T. Rowe, Mary B. Rankin, etc. even used the "public sphere in civil society" to understand the behavior of gentry leading public affairs. In contrast, Wei Feide (Frederic Wakeman, Jr) believes that the public behaviors of Hankou salt merchants such as repairing bridges and roads and setting up group training described by William Luo are all products of official pressure; Ran Meishuo's so-called public gentry behaviors are only the official social welfare policy. Ma Jin also reflected on the "gentlemen's domination theory" and "public sphere theory" in the study of Shantang. He found that the position of director of Shantang in the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou , Hangzhou and other places became a burden like corvee, and the gentry had no power to fight against the state power.
Liu Zhengyun also believes that the money association incident shows that the legitimacy of what gentry does depends entirely on the official attitude, and local officials still dominate the local politics of the Qing Dynasty. Despite this, he still reminded that it is necessary to add the "thief" group to the analysis of local political operations in the Qing Dynasty. "Sometimes, it is necessary to look at the interaction between officials, gentry and gentry, rather than the two aspects of common officials, gentry opposition or official and gentry cooperation" (Page 59).
It is worth mentioning that nearly twenty years after the publication of this book "Money Club and White Bush Conference" (1995), Luo Shijie revised the views of the article in the context of regional history. Luo pointed out that the Money Association is not a member of the society, but a popular popular organization in Wenzhou that has been popular for nearly a thousand years. He believes that Liu's interpretation of the incident ignores the role of local religious traditions in local politics and overestimates the role of gentry and imperial ideology in local society.
How to discuss history from archives
From the perspective of historical material utilization, the most prominent feature of this book is the extensive and in-depth use of the central archives of the Qing Dynasty, including the archives of the cabinet and the Military Affairs Office archives. The discovery of the value of archival historical materials of the cabinet's large treasury began with the well-known "Eight Thousand Sacks Incident" in 1921. In 1929, the newly established Institute of History and Culture purchased the archives of the cabinet's large treasury and carried out preliminary cataloging and sorting out the first book "Historical Materials of Ming and Qing Dynasties" in 1930. On the other hand, after the establishment of the Palace Museum's Documentation Museum in 1925, it also began to organize archives of the Palace and the Military Affairs Office and published them in the form of special historical materials, which were found in journals such as "Accusations Collection" and "Historical Materials Weekly". The publication of new historical materials such as
is undoubtedly of revolutionary significance to the study of Qing and modern history on that day. It is particularly worth mentioning that since 1930, young scholars such as Tang Xianglong from the Institute of Social Sciences of the Central Academy of Sciences began to systematically copy the financial and economic records of the Qing Dynasty in the archives of the Military Affairs Office and the cabinet. This is "the earliest creation of discovering and exploiting the Qing Dynasty government archives" in historical research. A series of world-renowned masterpieces of modern economic history research were born on this basis. However, after the work of the archives sorting and utilization of Zhaoduan quickly stopped due to the Japanese invasion of North China. Some of the archives that moved south were moved to Taiwan in 1949. The Qing Dynasty archives were separated from Beijing and Taipei. The former contained more than 10 million pieces, while the latter had more than 700,000 pieces.
The author of this book is connected with the Qing Dynasty archives. It began to review archives at the Palace Museum in Taipei twice in the early 1980s and wrote a dissertation. Since then, it has been "deeply trapped in it". All the research done is archives as the main material. After joining the Institute of History and Language in 1984, the author directly participated in the compilation of the archives of the cabinet's large library and was responsible for the digitization of the historical materials. Since 2001, he has been seconded to the Taipei Forbidden City Books and Documents Department for three years to manage archives and rare ancient books. Today, the archives and historical materials collected by Taipei’s three Qing Dynasty archives institutions—Taipei Palace Museum, the Institute of Modern History and the Institute of History and Language in the Institute of History and Language in Taipei have been integrated into the same platform, and cross-repository search ("Ming and Qing and Republic of China Archives Cross-repository Search Platform", http://archive.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/mctkm2c/archive/archivekm), which is an important task chaired by Professor Liu Zhengyun.
Cross-database search platform for archives in Ming and Qing dynasties and Republic of China
Archives are generally regarded as "first-hand historical materials" and "direct materials" in historical research. Those who treat recent history have many respects about archival historical materials, so that there is a saying that "no archives do not discuss them." On the other hand, "archive worship" has cooled down in recent years, and scholars have begun to pay attention to the "fiction" and "lip-syncing" phenomena in archives, and have reflected on their limitations. The author believes that, on the one hand, for those who are good at studying history, there is no difference between historical materials. Different historical materials can show different aspects of historical events and are suitable for different topics. Any records that are "useful" should be used by me. On the other hand, how to make archives "useful" and interpret them according to their strengths and avoid falling into the trap of official articles will test the wisdom of the history-based practitioners.
In this book, the author does not blindly follow the archival historical materials, and has thought deeply about their advantages and disadvantages. For example, regarding the time and space distribution of the Qing Dynasty's congressional party, the author mainly uses relevant archives of the congressional party's uprisings. Because any congressional party activities that hinder local order will naturally enter the archives due to the attention of the government. The author also noticed that using this as research material also has its limitations. In order to seek credit, officials may exaggerate the size of the congregation party; in order to reduce the punishment, the congregation may downplay their motivation for joining the congregation. However, many important information, such as the time of the founding of the Society and its evolution process, the names and backgrounds of the members of the Society, are recorded. Moreover, the two major variables that the author is concerned about - the time and place of the party's uprising, generally have clear explanations.
Like this book specifically discusses the limitations of confession materials, the author points out that although the stories in the confession in criminal cases are attractive, most of them only have outlines and lack details. So I can only sigh while reading the file: Why don’t you ask more, why don’t you say more? However, the nature of the file determines the content of the confession. The officials of the case trial in the Qing Dynasty usually only care about two issues: Who is the murderer? Did he kill someone on purpose or kill someone by mistake? As for the life background of the murderer and the victim, the motives of the crime, and the customs and customs of the local people, they don’t care. Therefore, the person involved will naturally not disclose much, which makes us miss many opportunities to understand the details of local society.
Another example is the investigation of the population of Sichuan in the Qianlong Dynasty. The author carefully examined the content based on the "Sichuan Tongzhou Provincial People's Book of the Sixty Years of Qianlong" in the collection of the Institute of History and History. He followed the idea of Mr. He Bingdi and and examined the authenticity of the people from the mechanism formed by this historical material, the implementation of the Baojia system. It was further discovered that the household registration data in the "Number of the People" in that year was not faked by the clerks, and the population data for several key years, including that year, was significantly improved, because the Supreme Government expressed special attention to the effectiveness of Baojia. Under appropriate administrative mobilization, a large number of hidden households were discovered. The author further reflects that in the long run, although this kind of mobilization is only an occasional event and an abnormal state, based on the literature generated at these key time points, it is still possible to obtain more credible historical population data to promote population history research. These meticulous thinking on
provides important examples for how to use archival historical materials to play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Despite this, relatively single reliance on archival historical materials still has inevitable limitations. For example, after comparing the case file of the uprising of the Association, the author believes that the Association of the Qing Dynasty did not appear since the Shunzhi Dynasty, but only saw the event during the Yongzheng period. However, considering the author used the Chinese memorials of the Palace and the Military Affairs Office, which were formed in large quantities since the Yongzheng period, this conclusion may still be room for consideration. At the same time, in addition to citing a large number of records of the association party in government archives, the lack of internal documents in the association party has also affected the display of historical events at different levels in the discussion. For example, the author emphasized the structural and regional issues many times, that is, the structural analysis is performed based on relevant records in various places in the archives, and the regional differences are relatively ignored. This is not a demand for the author, but a general problem faced by structural analysis of similar materials. However, if local historical materials are added and local interpretations are conducted in the context of regional history, it is likely to be another different research method.
In terms of the author's use and presentation methods of archival historical materials, it can be roughly divided into two categories.In the investigation of the local vocational system and party issues in the Qing Dynasty, the authors used more statistical methods based on bulk data, thereby drawing safe conclusions on a large scale. The wonderful ones, such as based on the statistics of the necessities and necessities of each province, to understand the substantial differences in local personnel rights between the different plans of other provinces and the Ministry of Personnel, and to correlate the places of the initiation of different associations with the vacancies in the place, to show the different tendencies of their activities.
In the discussion of the lives of the people at the bottom of society, the authors mostly use criminal case information to "tell stories". Although these confessions have their flaws, they are still the most direct material to understand the middle and lower classes of the Qing Dynasty. It is particularly worth mentioning that the last article of the book, "Also History", is a writing attempt by readers based on the public as the preset, which is quite exciting. The article completely quotes the confession of the criminal case, telling the unfortunate experience of four women during the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods: one was sold to others by her husband for life; one was forced to make a living and was allowed to commit rape by her husband; the other refused to ask for joy during the day; the other was conscious of reconciliation with her husband and killed him in anger. After the story is told, the author's judgment is: What happened to the four women is that they cannot control their own destiny, live under the control of their father and husband, and are also treated poorly in law.
When the life experiences of the little people and the historical scenes of the eighteenth century are presented before our eyes through the interrogation of the magistrate, the author truly feels that "life can sometimes be so humble, helpless, and even absurd." This real sense of liveness is difficult to obtain when reading general research papers. Therefore, telling stories about small people in the lower classes of society in a specific era may not be less important than finding the rope that links these stories.
