Rethinking the Decline of China's Qing Dynasty

Imperial Activism and Borderland Management at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Daniel McMahon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138791046
• eBook ISBN: 9781317650423
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The many instances of regional insurgency and unrest that erupted on China's borderlands at the turn of the nineteenth century are often regarded by scholars as evidence of government disability and the incipient decline of the imperial Qing dynasty. This book, based on extensive original research, argues that, on the contrary, the response of the imperial government went well beyond pacification and reconstruction, and demonstrates that the imperial political culture was dynamic, innovative and capable of confronting contemporary challenges. The author highlights in particular the Jiaqing Reforms of 1799, which enabled national reformist ideology, activist-oriented administrative education, the development of specialised frontier officials, comprehensive borderland rehabilitation, and the sharing of borderland administration best practice between different regions. Overall, the book shows that the Qing regime had sustained vigour, albeit in difficult and changing circumstances.

Part 1
Transitions in education and ideology

1
The Yuelu Academy and Hunan’s nineteenth-century turn toward statecraft

Teacher [Luo Dian] established proper instruction. He charged his students to mould their natural inclinations, gird their moral resolve, and clearly act according to the circumstances of the times … [The Teacher said:] “Those who do not crave glory, profit, or advantage are to be encouraged, but not even a junzi can keep from wanting a good name. Craving a name makes one clear in investigation, pure in conduct, and enthusiastic in acts of humanity. Far worse is pretending to be a Sage and thereby doing harm to the world – or else, having no desire and being placid and without plans. How can such conduct be relied on for national management and the peoples’ livelihood?!” The Teacher used a middle path to curb many extremes of this type. Over the past thirty years the south of [Dongting] lake has seen successive generations of talent. These several hundred notables include men ranked first in the Metropolitan Examinations, those employed in and out of government office, as well as provincial graduates and tribute students of virtuous conduct and brilliant literary attainments. The flourishing of the [Yuelu] Academy is unprecedented!

(Yan Ruyi (1759–1826), Leyuan wenchao 4:4a–5b)

In the eulogy above, a Hunan scholar praised Yuelu Academy headmaster Luo Dian’s (1717–1808) contribution to one of the most significant turns in this school’s thousand-year history. Dating from the late eighteenth century, the Yuelu Academy responded to growing concerns of pedantic scholarship and corrupt governance – problems often associated with nascent Qing dynastic decline – by shifting its pedagogical focus toward pragmatic “statecraft” (jingshi) study. From this “middle path” emerged a network of nationally prominent alumni who embraced Luo’s activist vision of Hunan-led imperial service, guiding the school’s early nineteenth-century expansion. The patronage of Luo and his students shaped a provincial climate in which “studies of substance and use” (you ti you yong zhi xue) became not just philosophically desirable to meet imperial challenges but also feasible as a strategy for personal career advancement.

As the historian Philip Kuhn observes, the developments of the Yuelu Academy “played a major role in nineteenth-century history.”¹ The Qing government, rocked by mismanagement, malfeasance, and rebellion, yielded to the solution of “literati activism,” extending the regional elite enhanced authority to undertake administrative initiatives. This “localist turn” empowered provincial literati interests, evidenced by the national emergence of scholars from Jiangnan (Chang-zhou School), Shaanxi (Guanxue Academy), and Guangdong (Xuehaitang).² Of the local leaders who seized the opportunities of political change from the 1799 Jiaqing Reforms, however, none did so more forcibly than those from Hunan. Historians note the dynamic “Hunan connection” that arose in the late Qing: a network of Yuelu-trained luminaries such as He Changling (1785–1848), Tao Shu (1779–1839), Wei Yuan (1794–1856), Zeng Guofan (1811–72), and Hu Linyi (1812–61).³ Hunanese scholar-officials made dynamic contributions to the empire, ranging from White Lotus and Taiping pacification to post-Taiping reconstruction and anti-imperialist “self-strengthening.”

The strong role of the Hunan elite in nineteenth-century imperial management had roots in Luo Dian’s late eighteenth-century promotion of statecraft values and institutional revival. Locally, Yuelu Academy activity focused Song Learning traditions, fostered regional pride, and encouraged links with provincial government. Nationally, it helped native sons attain specialized posts in the Qing bureaucracy. Subsequent education and networking contributed to an imperial niche for Hunanese-led activism and statecraft administration, in evidence by the 1820s and at its zenith by the 1870s. The school’s success galvanized the academy’s position as a central node in a Hunan nexus of lineage ties, Neo-Confucian study, literati relationships, and reformist networks in government.

Yuelu Academy historiography

The Yuelu Academy and its Shanhua (Changsha) environs have not lacked observers. In the Tang dynasty, peripatetic poets such as Han Yu pondered Yuelu Mountain’s scenic charm and legends of Yu the Great.⁴ Following the establishment of the academy in 976, Song teachers and administrators, such as the famed School of Principle (lixue) philosopher Zhang Shi (Zhang Nanxian, 1133–80), further commented on the institution. Their writings endured and, by the academy’s Ming dynasty resurgence, were compiled in the 1514 Yuelu zhi (Yuelu Academy gazetteer). As the school underwent periodic revival, local works were again recompiled in the form of the 1687 Yuelu zhi, 1830 Yuelu shichao (Collected poetry of the Yuelu Academy), and 1867 Yuelu xuzhi (Revised Yuelu Academy gazetteer).

Nor did these efforts end with the imperial era. Over the past three decades, roots-seeking and relaxed political controls in China have yielded a host of secondary studies. This includes the work of Chinese scholars such as Chen Sujia, Chen Haibo, Deng Hongbo, Li Xiaozhong, Liu Qi, Yang Busheng, Zhou Zuyi, and Zhu Hanmin, whose contributions include numerous articles, collections of source materials, and book-length studies. Taken together, this growing body of literature forms the most sophisticated discussion of the Yuelu Academy yet attempted. The current study owes it a debt.

The interpretative focus of this corpus, however, can be problematic. These studies of the academy almost uniformly lionize the school’s role as a shaper of imperial education, tautologically assuming and asserting Yuelu history as a case study of the “brilliance” of China’s traditional culture. Central to this interpretation is a vision of institutional and cultural continuity from the Northern Song to the Qing constituted of legacies of patriotism, autonomy, and statecraft.⁵ Locally, the new Yuelu historiography accords with efforts to promote Hunan’s distinctive worth. Nationally, it moves in tandem with trends in “national studies” (guo xue). In both instances, studies of the school advance – implicitly or explicitly – a link between the Yuelu past and China’s developing modernity.⁶

The current discussion deviates from extant secondary histories in two respects. First, it indicates that examination of Yuelu Academy history, as local history, requires enhanced appreciation of the school’s past as a series of episodic starts and stops. Changing historical circumstances yielded altered institutional strategies and even altered emphases on values. In this context, the essay focuses on one key period of change commencing from the end of the eighteenth century – as Yuelu thinkers considered, and endeavored to use activist values and methods to correct, imperial challenges suggestive of incipient Qing dynastic decline.

Second, this discussion is somewhat distinctive in its emphasis that the Yuelu Academy not only understood the importance of interaction with governmental authority but at several points in its history also availed itself of this strategy to strengthen its local and national position. Indeed, insofar as the school is understood to have uninterrupted millennial traditions, willful state cooperation might be considered one of them.

Song-Ming: Official cooperation and punctuated development

Although the Yuelu Academy is counted as one of the “Great Four” academies of the Northern Song, rival to Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) White Deer Grotto Academy, the Changsha school had distinctive origins. Unlike its three privately founded sister schools, the initial institution was built by the Tanzhou prefect Zhu Dong, with a stronger focus on public service. Here, it drew on traditions of local education, influenced by the School of Principle (lixue) innovations of “Hunan School” pioneers Hu Anguo (1079–1138) and Hu Hong (1106–61), and shaped in revival by Hu family disciple Zhang Shi.⁷

Zhang Shi’s tenure as a Yuelu Academy instructor, in particular, became a subject of celebration in later centuries, seen as key to the academy’s rise to Great Four status. Central to this notable’s evolving hagiography has been his emphasis on human nature (xing), humanity (ren), and public action. Zhang’s exhortation to “perfect talent in order to propagate the Way and succor the people,” a summary of his ideals, provided the cornerstone of reasserted traditions of statecraft and classical study.⁸ Also celebrated is Zhang’s relationship with the Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi, in particular during the months that this seminal philosopher was hosted at the academy. The clash of these titans constitutes the mythic origins of the “Zhu-Zhang Thought” fusion that would later be venerated as a Hunan tradition.⁹ For all of Zhang’s momentous thought and action, however, his immediate influence seems less profound than generally asserted. After his death, the academy went into the second of its three periods of Song-era decline.

Academy historians note that none other than Zhu Xi himself rescued the school two decades later. The philosopher, now returned to Hunan as a military commissioner (anfushi), took charge of institutional matters. He restored the campus, appointed his own students as instructors, revised the curriculum, and personally lectured. It is said that, by 1194, he had initiated ninety years of enlightenment that touched more than a thousand students.¹⁰

In light of Zhu’s involvement, there is logic to both the school’s success and its close historical relationship with Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism. Two points of historical context, however, merit observation. First, the process of academy restoration commenced at least eight years prior to the scholar’s arrival, with rein-vigorated cooperation with provincial officials such as the military commissioner Pan Chou.¹¹ Zhu continued the work of his predecessor, with a contribution that was – at least in the short term – more administrative than intellectual. Second, as William de Bary observes, Zhu during the Song was not the exalted personage of later days. Indeed, less than a decade after his Yuelu work the thinker was condemned as a heretic and propagator of false teachings.¹² At this time, the height of Yuelu’s national stature, the academy may have held itself aloof from state opinion. However, the Yuelu tradition of government patronage, as the contemporary trend of its governmental cooperation, does not suggest this to be the case. Historical sources, and their later interpreters, thus may have overstated Zhu’s immediate impact.¹³

Accounts dating from the Ming dynasty observe few significant academy advances during the Yuan dynasty, with the exception of patriotic resistance during the Song-Yuan transition. In contrast, Yuan accounts indicate the start of an institutionalization that extended to the end of the imperial era.¹⁴ As Edward Dreyer has argued, Yuan dynasty developments had a strong, albeit largely unacknowledged, impact on the Ming.¹⁵ Discussing education, de Bary further notes that promotion of a Zhu Xi–centered orthodoxy constituted a critical innovation o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Transitions in education and ideology
• Part 2 Management of the Hunan Miao Frontier
• Part 3 Management of the southern Shaanxi highlands
• Part 4 Management of the Guangdong coast
• Glossary
• References
• Index