Ancient China: The Qing Dynasty

The Later Years of Kangxi's Reign (1684-1722)

In the later years the rulers became accepted as a legitimate Chinese dynasty.
The Manchu-Chinese antagonism ceased to be an important factor in politics.
Kangxi now committed himself to the business of being a Chinese emperor.
He was extremely hard-working
He read and commented. on average of 50 memorials a day.
He also held audiences & performed routine tasks; he also travelled extensively.
In the 1690s he led two campaigns against the Dzungars.
The Russians had, by then, already expanded across Siberia.
In 1656 they had constructed a fort at Albazin on the Amur river.
Kangxi ordered an attack on Albazin.
But he was aware of the possible alliance between the Dzungars and the Russians.
The Dzungars were a Western branch of the Mongol tribes.
He captured Albazin and sought a settlement with Russia
The negotiations between the two states were handled by Jesuit missionaries.
This resulted in the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689.
This was the first treaty signed by China which accepted the principle of diplomatic equality.
The treaty demarcated the frontier between China & Russia.
It kept the Amur River in Chinese hands.
This settlement left Kangxi free to attack the Dzungars.
Galdan, the leader of the Dzungars was threatening to unite the Mongol tribes.
Kangxi led campaigns in 1696 & 1697.
This resulted in the defeat of the Dzungars & the suicide of Galdan.
But the Dzungar remained a threat throughout Kangxi's reign.
In 1717 they rashly invaded Tibet.
This gave Kangxi a pretext to intervene and establish a Chinese presence in Lhasa.
Kangxi continued the practices of the Ming.
There were significant innovations:
1) imperial household system.
The first was the development of the imperial household system.
Before. the conquest, the Manchu had kept household or agricultural slaves.
Many of them were ethnic Chinese.
Their descendants became hereditary slaves or bondservants of the emperor or princes.
From 1615 the bondservants were organized into the banner companies.
The imperial household was derived from the bondservant companies of the banners.
They were commanded directly by the emperor.
This was when the supervising officials were becoming his officials.
Also the rank and file became his personal servants.
the development of the Imperial household had been interrupted by Shunzhi
It was because of his decision to revive the eunuch-controlled Thirteen Offices.
fairs.
In 1661 Kangxi formally established the Imperial Household Department.
He did this to control the eunuchs and to manage the emperor's affairs.
This was situated in the Forbidden City.
By the late 18th century, the Imperial Household employed some 1600 officials.
It was engaged in a wide variety of administrative & commercial activities.
These activities were for the emperor.
2) the inner court
The Imperial Household belonged to what was known as the "inner court."
This was the realm of the emperor, as opposed to the realm of the bureaucracy.
The outer court operated in accordance with the provisions & administrative precedent.
The inner court operated according to the emperor's will.
The outer court communicated with officials through open channels.
The inner court used the "palace memorial" system.
This was a way of communicating directly and secretly with correspondents in the provinces.
Many correspondents were bondservants serving in the provinces, often in the south.
They supplied Kangxi with confidential information on provincial affairs.
They also informed Kangxi of the conduct of officials.

3) the employment of foreigners, mostly Jesuits at court.
The Jesuit mission in Beijing had been established in the closing years of the Ming dynasty.
The Jesuits had helped the Ming by supplying them with cannons.
Their expertise enabled them to retain their position in China after the Manchu conquest.
Shunzhi had been impressed by the German Jesuit Adam Schall.
Schall was a noted astronomer.
During the Obloi regency the Jesuits fell out of favour with the Manchu elite.
This was because of their association with the Shunzhi emperor.
During Kangxi's reign the Jesuits at court enjoyed a position of trust.
This was similar to that of the Chinese bondservants.
In 1664 Adam Schall was accused of inaccuracy in the dating of the calendar.
This amounted to treason & was sentenced to death which was later rescinded.
Schall died in 1666 and his position was taken by Ferdinand Verbiest.
He restored the Jesuit's position.
He defeated his Chinese opponent on a further dispute over the calendar.
He showed his superior skill in math.
Kangxi employed other Jesuits
They were architects, mathematicians, and artists.
They were also diplomats in the negotiations of the Treaty of Nerchinsk.
The Jesuit missionaries had also successfully treated the emperor for malaria.
They did this by prescribing quinine.
In 1693 Kangxi issued an "edict of tolerance."
This allowed the teaching of Christianity.
He also commissioned Jesuits to make a cartographic survey (for a map) of the empire.
But the Jesuits were already under attack from other Christin groups.
This was because they were willing to compromise with the Chinese practice of ancestral worship.
This was a requirement by Kangxi.
The Pope sent Charles Maillard de Tourno to the Qing court to resolve the issue.
He was received in audience by Kangxi.
But Kangxi would not agree to allow a representative of the Pope to reside in Beijing.
Maillard de Tourno did not accept the Jesuit accommodation on the matter of rites.
The papal legate (Charles Maillard) threatened these Jesuits to be excommunicated.
Kangxi then offered them a choice:
a) either all the missionaries accept the compromise and agree to remain in China for life.
b) or leave the country.
After Kangxi's death further negotiations took place.
No agreements could be reached.
In 1742 the papal bull Ex Quo Singulari forbade Christians to perform the Chinese rites.
Some European missionaries remained in Beijing.
But the proselytization of Christianity was forbidden.
The practice of Christianity by Chinese converts was driven underground.
It did continue to make progress in some provinces, like Sichuan.
In 1712 Kangxi announced that tax-collection units, should be frozen permanently.
He said they should not take account of the rise in population.
This decision was represented as an act of benevolence.or as a peace dividend.
It was seen as fulfilling the idea that good government keeps the burden of tax light.
Kangxi's reasons for this action may have been different.

Since the conquest, the dynasty had an increase of problems over the collection of taxes.
in the early years attempts were made to simplify & centralize the tax system.
But it remained extremely complex & vulnerable to under-collection & corruption.
When young, Kangxi had been made aware of the political risks of enforcing tax payments.
After that he found it expedient to act leniently on these matters.
On several occasions he granted generous tax amnesties.
He did fail to deal harshly with cases of official corruption.
He did not take steps to deal with the problem of "hidden land."
This was the recently reclaimed land that did not appear on the registry.

Kangxi's later years were clouded by worries over succession.
In 1676 he had followed the Chinese imperial custom.
He had named the 18 month old Yinreng, his second son as heir to the throne.
At first the relationship between father and son was good.
In 1696, when campaigning against Galden, he appointed Yinreng as regent.
After his return Kangxi heard reports that Yinreng was engaged in immoral behaviour.
The next 15 years, the emperor vacillated between denouncing his son or reinstating him.
Finally in 1712 Yinreng was declared insane & was deposed.
Until he lay on his deathbed Kangxi refused to name who should succeed him.
According to one version, he nominated his 4th son.
He was to reign as the Yongzheng emperor
But the new emperor was to stand accused of usurping the throne.
The throne should have gone to Kangxi's 14th son,
Yongzheng was accused of having poisoned his father.
The charges came from factional infighting.
This had marked court politics during the long succession crisis.

The Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-35)

The short reign of Yongzheng was notable for the emperor's attempt to introduce reforms.
The first was in response to the circumstances under which he had come to the throne.
In September 1723 he introduced a new succession system.
This departed from both the Chinese tradition & the Manchu custom.
The Chinese appointed the eldest son born of an empress.
The Manchu appointed the ruler's sons according to merit.
It also required the approval of influential members of the imperial family.
The emperor selected his heir and put his name in a sealed box.
His choice was not revealed to anyone, including the candidate himself.
It would only be known after the emperor's death.
Another reform was the bureaucratization of the banner system.
There had been a sharp decline in the value of the banner forces as a military unit.
There were strong cliques within the five Interior Banners headed by the Manchu princes.
Yongzheng deprived the princes control of companies within the banners.
He placed the banners under uniform administrative rules.
He established banner schools to preserve the elements of Manchu & Mongol culture.
He took steps to improve the economic conditions of the bannermen.
The emperor also reformed the dynastic governmental machinery.
The palace memorial system undermined the censorial system.
It did this by enabling the emperor to access confidential information directly.
To complement this arrangement Yongzheng developed the "court letter."
This was a direct & confidential instruction to provincial officials.

This change was part of a much more important reform.
This had its origin under Kangxi 7 which was to be developed further by Yongsheng.
This refers to the Grand Council
This was the inner court council.
It was made up of equal numbers of high-ranking Chinese and Manchus officials.
They would meet daily in the presence of the Emperor
This enabled the Emperor to deal with the high volume of business requiring his attention.
The Grand Council, as a permanent body, was invested with broad powers.
It did not appeared until early in Qianlong's reign in 1729.
Yongzheng created a forerunner body to co-ordinate the campaign against te Dzungars.
The Kangxi Emperor bequeathed to his successor a stable treasury that was nearly empty.
The reason for this was not Kangxi's extravagance nor was it excessive military expenditure
It was the large deficit between the amount of tax levied and the amount of tax received.
This deficit has two main causes:
a) loss at the point of collection
b) the proportion retained at the provincial level of government.

Kangxi had adopted a relaxed attitude on fiscal matters.
Yongzheng immediately instituted a crusade against official corruption.
He initiated a reform connected with the "maltase fee", a surcharge on the land tax.
This was to compensate for losses when silver was melted down.
The silver was melted for taxes.
The excessive imposition of this surcharge was an abuse.
It also indicated that officials were quite underpaid.
Yongzheng acknowledged this problem & legalized the maltage fee.
This was to supplement official salaries and to provide public funds for projects.
Yongzheng's reform did not touch upon the fundamental weakness of the fiscal system.
The system was not able to extract more than 5% of te GNP of an agrarian economy.
Yongzheng involved himself in many other aspects of ruling.
He was determined to enforce ideological conformity among the literati.
he followed his father in promoting Neo-Confucianism in the form of the School of Principle.
This favoured:
a )moral imperatives such as the total subjection of women.
b) the indisputable authority of fathers.
c) the unquestioning loyalty of subjects to rulers.
In 1670 Kangxi had circulated his Sacred Edict.
It expounded these principles in the form of 16 maxims.
In 1724 Yongzheng reissued the edict with his own amplified instructions.
Examination candidates were required to to memorize the maxims.
Scholars were required to expound them twice monthly at Confucian temples.
Yongzheng was concerned with the ethnic minorities in the south.
Previously the imperial policy had relied upon the tribal headman system.
This was the fact that that minorities were ruled by their own tribal leaders.
These leaders were given official ranks and the people themselves were left alone.
In the 18th century, pressure on areas of ethnic minorities increased.
These incidents multiplied.
Yongzheng found the system incompatible with the principle of universal & absolute rule.
He began to bring the minority groups into the provincial administrative system.
This involved the pacification of minority groups (Miao) and their subsequent sinicization.
Yongzheng's reputation as a ruler is mixed.
He stands accused of having usurped the throne.
He is accused of having disposed ruthlessly of his brothers
Yet he has been hailed as "the greatest centralizer and stabilizer" of the Qing Dynasty.
He is seen as one who revitalized the state administration and fostered a time of economic prosperity.
He ruled as an autocrat.
He freed himself from dependence on the bureaucracy & reliance on the Manchu princes.
His objective was not simply power for he showed compassion for his subjects.

The Qianlong Emperor (r.1736-95)

Yongzheng was succeeded by his 4th son, to be known as the Qianlong emperor.
Yongzheng had concealed the name of his heir.
The future emperor and his half-brother closest to him in age were given the same education.
They had the same administrative experience to prepare them equally for the throne.
Both attended the Palace School and studied Manchu texts & Confucian classics.
Both learned calligraphy, painting, & writing poetry & received instruction in archery.
Both made the use of firearms and went hunting.
Qianlong continued the autocratic tendencies of his father's government.
In the early years of his reign, the Grand Canal took its definitive shape.
The imperial princes lost their seats on the council, their places being taken by Manchus.
The Grand Council became so effective tat t no longer needed the emperor's concern.
There was a willingness to appoint Chinese officials, as opposed to Chinese bannermen.
This was for provincial appointments.
The operation of the bureaucracy remained unchanged.
The examination system continued in full force.
Appointments to the civil service were dominated by degree-holders.
Competition for official appointments became severe.
Success in the examinations went increasingly to certain families.
These were the ones that had previously placed a member in the bureaucracy.
They were also those who could afford to use the purchase system to enter the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy was now too large & its procedures too complex.
It could no longer be a simple instrument of the emperor's will.
Qianlong understood this.

The Qing Period
During the 18th century, the Qing empire doubled its territorial size.
Qianlong's contribution to this massive expansion came in Tibet & Xinjiang.
A Chinese presence in Lhasa had been established during his grandfather's reign.
The Chinese influence was undermined by Dzungar intrigues, which in 1750 led to a civil war.
Qianlong's response was to install the Dalai Lama as the temporal ruler of the state.
He also declared Chinese protectorate over the country.
In 1793 Qianlong decreed that the future Dalai Lama should be chosen by lot.
He sent a golden urn to Lhasa for that purpose.
In Xinjiang, the Dzungars continued to offer a challenge.
Between 1755 & 1757 Qing forces virtually forced them out.
The early Manchu rulers had been willing to experiment in matters of foreign relations.
Qianlong generally followed the practices of the tributary system.
China also accepted some responsibility for the well-being of tributary states.
In 1788 a Chinese force was sent to Annam to assist the king to put down a rebellion.
The Qing court valued foreign trade.
It was mindful of the potential dangers of foreign contacts in the south.
This was a region of suspect loyalty.
In 1684 restrictions on foreign trade was erased but remained under close regulations.
Superintendent of maritime customs, the Hoppo, was stationed at Guangzhou
Only certain Chinese merchants were allowed to take a share of the trade.
They were required to guarantee the debts of the foreign traders.
these privileged merchants belonged to the monopolistic group known as the Cohong.
At first, trade was permitted at a number of southern ports.
This proved difficult to regulate.
From 1760 maritime trade was confined to Guangzhou.
By the 18th century the most important participant in this trade was Great Britain.
It was monopolized by the East India Co.
They handled the tea trade, China's most substantial export.
British trade was monopolized by the East India Company.
In Qianlong's reign the economy was doing great.
Its basic economy was based on agriculture with rice, wheat and millet being their most important exports.
In sone regions cotton, rice and tea were important.
In the 18th century the population doubled from 150 million to 300 million.
Little land was available for cultivation
Between 1750 & 1775 the amount of food declined
Non-food items became obsolete.
There was no money to invest for improvement.
Qianlong's reign has emphasized its stability & achievements.
But the first sign of decline made its appearance.

Some of the indicators anticipated the beginning of the end of the imperial system.
these were
a) literary & intellectual life
b) popular religion
c) the rise of rebellion
d) bureaucratic corruption.

Thought, Literature, Religion, Rebellion, & Bureaucracy

The Qianlong emperor promoted himself as a patron of the arts.
He wrote poetry and commissioned scholarly enterprises.
The most important was the compilation of important works.
This was the Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature.
This was a collection of 3500 works deemed to be the best in the Chinese literary tradition.
The selection & editing provided employment for an army of scholars.
But the enterprise had a dark side.
It was also a literary inquisition.
Its aim was to identify and destroy certain literary works.
These were those that contained disrespectful references to the Manchus.
The scholars were involved in collecting rather than original scholarship.
the whole project has been seen as repressive & stultifying.
Among popular religion, the most widespread was the White Lotus Religion.
Its followers worshipped a supreme deity called the Eternal Mother.
The religion suffered from periodic state persecution
As a consequence it had no central organization
It was composed of small communities linked only by visits from traveling teachers.
The White Lotus religion found many of their converts among recent migrants.
Others wireless settled in society; many women found it appealing.
The religion existed to satisfy the spiritual need of the believers.
It provided them with social support.
It did contain a millenarian message.
This predicted a coming apocalypse marked by the arrival of the Maitreya Buddha.
The White Lotus religion inspired the uprising led by Wang Lin.
The rebels were soon defeated
They had exposed the incapacity of the Chinese Army of Green Standards.
They also exposed the weakness of the Manchu banner troops sent against them.
Twenty years later the White Lotus inspired the 1st major popular rebellion.
This would threaten the dynasty.
This arose in the mountain region between the upper waters of the Yangzi & Yellow Rivers.
This was an area that had received many recent migrants.
The rebellion was not suppressed at first
Only when the government permitted local gentry to raise milia forces & employ mercenaries.
Also when they had sanctioned the movement of the population into strategic hamlets.
In this way denying the rebels food and fresh recruits.
Another issue ws that of bureaucratic corruption.
This was commonly cited as a cause of dynastic decline.
Yongzheng had attempted to treat what he regarded as the root cause of corruption.
There were inadequate salaries.
They did this by providing extra stipends for "cultivation of incorruptibility."
In Qianlong's reign these reforms were modified.
Officials were even more handicapped than they had been 50 years previously.
Corruption became a threat to the very survival of the unified Chinese state.
This was illustrated by reference to a Manchu Bannerman named Heshen.
He was Qianlong's favourite throughout the last 25 years of his life.
Heshen was to be accused of having built up an extraordinary network of patronage.
This corrupted a large part of the civil and military establishment.
It also contributed to the growth of unrest and the rise of rebellion.
During the rebellion Heshen got the emperor to believing that he was succeeding.
But he embezzled large sums of money intended for military supplies.
For this, Qianlong's successor, the Jiaqing emperor had Heshen arrested.
He was then allowed to commit suicide.
It was not accepted unanimously that corruption was undermining the Qing government.
It was probably not more prevalent than in any other dynasty.

Ancient China

Saturday, December 4, 2021

The Qing Dynasty

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