Using Qing Documents for Historical Research

What are "Qing documents"?

Primarily and in the narrow sense, they are the official correspondence of the era between 1636-1924, especially the imperial utterances (mainly edicts and rescripts) and the bureaucratic reports that usually called them forth. In a broader sense, however, we include under "Qing documents" biographies, inscriptions, genealogies, contracts, gazetteers, essays on administration ("statecraft"), and the compendious reference works that were a Ming and Qing specialty – in short, all the different sorts of texts that are of use for research on the late imperial period, defined here as the mid-14th to early 20th centuries.

We are so inclusive partly because the vast majority of such writings is to some degree composed in the documentary style that had evolved ever since the auspices were recorded on the oracle bones for the Shang rulers. Various terms (and especially titles) differed, of course, from one dynasty to another as the official system evolved. Generally, however, we can say that the documentary style was used to record what happened within the purview of government; it was the vehicle for a major part of the human historical record. After all, before, say, 1800, Qing documents were written and read by a larger body of scholars, officials, clerks, copyists, archivists and other scriveners than any other documentary style, not excepting medieval Latin.

There is another reason, however, for our inclusiveness in defining the scope of "Qing documents": one of the great opportunities for users of documents today is to put the official record into its social context, or conversely to study early modern Chinese society – its economy, polity, social structure, customs, and values – through the flow of people, events, beliefs, and attitudes recorded in these materials.

This syllabus has been designed with three principal objectives in mind. First, of acquainting the student with the vocabulary and structure of a wide range of original sources, including (but not limited to) official documents of the Qing era; second, of providing a context for interpreting these sources; and third, of giving students an opportunity for practice in translating these sources into English. Additionally, it is hoped that the student will gain familiarity with the ever-expanding array of reference works that are of use in research in late imperial history, including tools for identifying dates, persons, official titles, places, types of documents, administrative procedures and social-economic institutions. Some standard reference works are introduced in the notes that accompany the selection of documents; a much wider selection will be found in the listings under "Reference Guides". These listings also offer an introduction to the general types of sources historians turn to in pursuing research.

Students with three or more years' solid study of Chinese, including a year of classical Chinese, will find Qing documents a friendly area full of the satisfactions that come with gradual mastery of various kinds of materials. Every effort should be made to track down items in the text as the notes suggest, so that one can learn to use these reference works quickly and accurately.

This syllabus is divided into two parts. Part One contains a set of sixteen documents pertaining to a rebellion led by a certain Zhong Renjie, which occurred in Hubei province in 1842. Part Two contains a separate selection of documents illustrating a broader range of different types of sources. Some of these are documents generated by the state apparatus of the sort one is likely to encounter in major archival installations such as the First Historical Archives, Beijing; the Liaoning Provincial Archives; the National Palace Museum, Taipei; and Academia Sinica. Others are materials produced outside the official bureaucracy, of the sort that are to be found in local archives and libraries.

Documents on the Rebellion of Zhong Renjie

In modern times, the penetration of national politics and culture into every crevice of life has made possible, even necessary, a style of historiography that takes account of many levels of society. If successful, such a style shows that no act of high politics is without its impact upon local communities, and no substantial feature of the local scene escapes national notice. That such an integrated style of history-writing may be possible for some pre-modern societies as well is suggested by the Chinese case.

Starting ca. 1980, the dramatic increase in the availability of Qing archival sources, and expanded possibilities for fieldwork, has made possible a style of research in which particular local events can yield information on every sector and stratum of society: the emperor and his court, burdened by their political and cosmological centrality; the central and local bureaucrats, maneuvering in an environment of harsh accountability and rich opportunity; the local elite, warily picking their way between demands of state and society; and the common people, struggling to get along.

Two features of late imperial society caused the archival record to be compiled in a way that brought all these groups together posthumously, as it were, in Beijing:

First, the system of bureaucratic accountability forced local officials to deal with many sorts of anomaly in village society (and so to generate records about them). Of course, not all anomalies were reported; but failure to report (if discovered) incurred heavy penalties for the local bureaucrat. The official docket, therefore, was quite full. Serious local problems (floods, famines, fiscal shortfalls, capital crimes, riot and rebellion, official malfeasance) found their way into reporting channels that led straight to Beijing. In the imperial archives their records remain to this day, welcoming the researcher into every sector of Chinese life.

Second, the civil service recruitment system brought every examination candidate into a network of obligation and preferment that stretched from the meanest county town to the grandest halls of state. The elite's integration through the examination system left a vast written residue, as the literati communicated with one another about affairs of empire-wide significance.

The concentration of historical documents in Beijing enables the researcher to use an event such as a local rebellion to reveal more general facts about social and institutional history, if enough care is taken to track down references to persons, places, and bureaucratic units. In this process the historian functions like an archaeologist, by whom every shard can be traced to its pot, every pot to its maker, and every maker to his way of life. These documents can often be supplemented by other materials not necessarily to be found in Beijing but in local archives and libraries, as well as later documentary publications.

The documents in this collection relate to a rebellion that occurred in the early months of 1842. Besides introducing the reader to techniques of reading and analysing primary sources, they are designed to illustrate a research technique in which the full dimensions of the event can be glimpsed across the broad gulf that separated village from palace. By reading about Zhong Renjie, we can penetrate the many social and political systems that impinged upon him. In the grand scheme of things, it was a small event; but it shook loose documentation from many sectors of Chinese life.

Transmission Diagrams

Overview of Qing Central Organs 

Circuit of Routine Memorial (Right) and Palace Memorial (Left)

清代文書流通簡表

On the Structure of Documents

Parallel phrases

One feature of documentary style (like literary Chinese in general) is the use of character groups of parallel rhythm. These parallel pairs often include parallel syntax. This prosody is plainly akin to what we would call blank verse in English. In an unpunctuated text, you can get valuable guidance from this fact. Indeed, for the old Chinese scholar, it made punctuation unnecessary in the first place. The punctuation marks (circles) in the Chinese text of many documents were added by the modern editors when they prepared the archival documents for photo-reproduction.

Documentary signposts

Another feature is that one document ordinarily refers to and quotes others. In order to establish the context of official procedure in which a document was created, you must put it in its proper place in the flow of communications among the other documents to which it refers or which may be available. Therefore, in analyzing a document, it generally makes sense to compile a complete list, for your own reference, of all documentary traffic referred to whether or not each document referred to has survived. Similarly, in order to establish the context of each passage, you must work out the document's internal structure, particularly who is quoting whom.

This process is aided by certain signpost terms, the most important of which are (1) characters that introduce sentences or passages, indicating a new subject or new speaker; (2) phrases that bracket quotations. Here is a list of some of the signpost phrases you will meet with. These terms have been selected purely empirically for their frequency and significance concerning administrative procedure and/or the internal structure of documents.