Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  47. See Elman, Cultural history, 361–4, on the moral collapse of failed candidates. Ho, Ladder, 36, and Chow, Publishing, 50–1, describe scholars who ‘ploughed with their ink stands’; Chow, ‘Writing’, and Elman, op. cit, 403–9, discuss the manuals on how to pass, written by those who had failed. See also ch. 19 below.

  48. Miller, State versus gentry, 140, quoting the ‘charter’ of the Fu she composed by Zhang Pu, its founder. Statistics from Dennerline, Chia-ting loyalists, 30–9. Atwell, ‘From education to politics’, 344, notes that the Fu she was strongest in precisely those areas where Wei had hunted down Donglin supporters most brutally. See also ch. 19 below.

  49. Chow, Publishing, 233–7, describes the Guobiao (‘Models of the state’) published by the Fu she in 1632.

  50. Elman, Cultural history, 196–202 and 304–26, notes the various attempts to ‘beat the system’. Other data from Ho, Ladder, 178; Des Forges, Cultural centrality, 127–8; and Peterson, Bitter gourd, 113–19.

  51. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 155, quoting a memorial by Zuo Maodi.

  52. Details in Hucker, Chinese government, 69, and Dardess, ‘Monarchy in action’, 21.

  53. Des Forges, Cultural centrality, 204–7, summarizes Li's early career. ‘Zicheng’ means ‘complete by oneself’. Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming, offered the most recent example of a bandit leader who had founded an imperial dynasty – and some of Li's slogans were modelled on those of Zhu in his ‘bandit phase’.

  54. Des Forges, Cultural centrality, 275, quotes the ditty, which he dates to 1642. Li Yu's 1668 play The miraculous reunion, with Li Zicheng in the ‘starring role’ explaining his methods of fleecing civilians, shows how some civilians perceived the bandits: Chang and Chang, Crisis and transformation, 214–16.

  55. See Des Forges, Cultural centrality, 276, 292–3 and 311 (on the administrative arrangements of the Shun regime), 235–6 and 268 (on the use of ancient precedents by Li and others); and 294–6 (on Shun civil service exams).

  56. Wakeman, ‘The Shun Interregnum’, 45 (on first ditty) and 77 nn. 6–7, on the slogans; Des Forges, Cultural centrality, 275, for the second ditty.

  57. Cheng and Lestz, The search, 7, for Li's proclamation to the citizens of Huangzhou; Des Forges, Cultural centrality, 211–12, on the punishment of Ming clansmen, and 275–6, on the egalitarian policies.

  58. Zhang, ‘Politics and morality’, 1, quoting the Ming Shi.

  59. Struve, Voices, 7, quoting the ‘Short Record’ of Liu Shangyou about his visit to Beijing in 1644.

  60. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 306, quotes the proclamation to the Han Chinese drafted by Fan Wencheng. Estimates of Qing strength at this point differ wildly. Fang, ‘A technique’, argues that 620 banner companies existed in spring 1644, each with around 300 fighting men, one-third of them liable for military service at any one time. This suggests a force of 186,000 warriors, of whom 62,000 would have been ready to invade. Elliott, Manchu way, 1, 117 and 363–4, estimates the number of free adult males in the Banners at between 300,000 and 500,000, with 120,000 ready to invade. Fang's lower estimate seems more plausible.

  61. Cheng and Lestz, The search, 25–6, Wu's letter to Dorgon, preserved in the earliest draft of the Veritable records of the Shunzhi emperor. Hsi, ‘Wu’, points out that in this version, Wu used the term ‘Northern State’, as any loyal Ming subject would have done before the Qing entered Beijing (but not afterwards, when they would have written ‘Great Qing State’). This supports its authenticity. Hay, ‘The suspension of dynastic time’, 171–97, notes how the Chinese system of giving all dates by reign forced people to choose between Ming and Qing.

  62. Cheng and Lestz, The search, 26–7, Dorgon's reply to Wu (also drafted by Fan Wencheng). Both men pursued opportunistic policies: Wu approached Dorgon primarily for personal and family reasons while Dorgon wanted to acquire lands capable of feeding his people by whatever means possible.

  63. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 312 (the third line of the jest refers to the founder of the Han dynasty, who ‘mounted the throne on horseback’ and founded a legitimate dynasty – whereas Li did not).

  64. Struve, Voices, 18–19, from a ‘Memoir of residing in Beijing’ (1644) by Liu Shangyou, a minor official from near Shanghai. The fate of the Ming crown prince remains a mystery: Li claimed to have captured him (and offered to surrender him to Dorgon), but he then disappeared – presumably murdered.

  65. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 316–17, Dorgon's edict of 5 June 1644; Zhang, ‘Politics and morality’, 324–5, notes Dorgon's astute strategy.

  66. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 318, quoting Xu Yingfen's General record of experiencing the dynastic change; and 418, quoting Song Quan (who in 1646 became a Grand Secretary).

  67. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 634–5 (letter from Antonio de Gouvea, S. J. to the General of the Order); Elvin, Pattern, 246 (quoting a county gazetteer). Lists of tenant revolts in Tong, Disorder, 185–6. For a graphic example of a slave uprising, see Cheng, The search, 39–44. For more on the chaos, see Will, ‘Coming of age’, 31–2; and, on the spate of popular revolts in Guangdong province, Mazumdar, Sugar and society, 202–4.

  68. Fu, Ming-Ch'ing, 99–101, quoting the bondservant leader Song Qi, and the gazetteer of Baoshan county (I thank Christopher Reed for this reference).

  69. Examples in Marks, Tigers, 143–7; Will, ‘Un cycle hydraulique’, 275–6.

  70. Mote, Imperial China, 828, quoting Dorgon.

  71. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 456–7 and 458–61 (list of reforms proposed by former Ming officials).

  72. See ibid., 425–7 and 439–40, on the preponderance of Shandong officials among the ‘twice-serving ministers’, and Agnew, ‘Culture and power’, 49–57, on the lamentable state of Shandong in 1643–4.

  73. Elliott, Manchu Way, 98–116; Naquin, Peking, 289–97.

  74. My analysis draws on Ko, ‘The body as attire’, 12–13 and 20; and Kuhn, Soulstealers, 58–9. Struve, Voices, 64, prints a first-hand account of scholarly resentment at shaving their heads.

  75. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 420–2, on Dorgon's reluctant revocation of the edict on 25 June 1644.

  76. Struve, Southern Ming, 48, from the Guoque compiled by Tan Qian in the 1650s. On the embassy from Nanjing, see Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 405–11. The term ‘Southern Ming’ only became common in the twentieth century. No Ming loyalist at the time used it, because it would have recognized the legitimacy of the Manchus' seizure of the north; and no Qing writer used it, because it would have accorded legitimacy to the resisters. I use it here for convenience.

  77. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 556–63, and Meyer-Fong, Building culture, 14–20. For more on the sack of Yangzhou, see ch. 2 above. On the unique 1644 monsoon, see Yancheva, ‘Influence’, 76, Fig. 3.

  78. Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 584–8 (on the surrender of the officials) and 646–7 (order of Prince Dodo, 19 June 1645).

  79. Kuhn, Soulstealers, 54, quoting Dorgon's outburst on 22 June and the decree of 8 July 1645. Cheng and Lestz, The search, 33–4, print the orders of the Board of Rites.

  80. Martini, Bellum, 279. Nicola Di Cosmo reminds me that head-shaving epitomized a dilemma common to all foreign dynasties that conquered China: how far should they ‘pander’ to Chinese customs and how much should they allow their own followers to ‘Sinicize’?

  81. Wakeman, ‘Localism and loyalism’, offers a detailed reconstruction of these events, while Marmé, ‘Survival’, 156, records the sack of Suzhou after anti-tonsure riots. Brook, The troubled empire, 256–7, notes that resistance often began with a refusal to cut one's hair as the Qing demanded.

  82. Will, ‘Coming of age’, 32–3, paraphrasing Yao's memoirs.

  83. Naquin, Peking, 363–4, notes Qing vigilance concerning the capital's food supply, and a similar system for supplying salt. I have translated a shi of rice – 103.5 litres – as a ‘bushel’.

  84. Kessler, K'ang-hsi, 14, quoting a memorial by a governor-general in 1649 (presumably echoing the old saying
‘You can conquer China on horseback, but you cannot rule it on horseback’).

  85. See Marks, Tigers, 139 and 195–202; Rawski, The last emperors, 222; Son, Zhongguo gudai, categories 3–17, 4–9, and 4–12 for the 1650s; Liu, ‘A 1000-year history’, 458–9, for the typhoons. See also the annual climate maps in Zhongguo Jin-wubai-nian.

  86. Chang, ‘Disease and its impact’, notes that these strict measures increased Manchu paranoia about the disease.

  87. Martini, Bellum 189–90. Other details from Bowra, ‘The Manchu conquest of Canton’; Wakeman, The Great Enterprise, I, 558–65, 655–61 and II, 817–18; and Struve, Southern Ming, 139–43 (with useful campaign map).

  88. On Coxinga's negotiations with the Qing in 1654, see Struve, Voices, 184–203 (quotations from 191, 194, 196). In 1646 a Southern Ming ruler bestowed on Zheng the imperial surname. Thereafter he was addressed as guoxing ye (‘Gentleman of the imperial surname’) which Westerners rendered as ‘Coxinga’.

  89. See Struve, Southern Ming, 154–66 and 178–93.

  90. Nakayama, ‘On the fluctuation’, 76–8 (quoting several contemporary sources). For more on shu huang see ch. 2 above.

  91. Will, ‘Un cycle hydraulique’, 276, details on Hanchuan county.

  92. Struve, Southern Ming, 74 (for consistency, I have changed ‘Ch'ing’ to ‘Qing’ in this passage).

  93. On these complex events, see again Struve, Southern Ming, 154–95.

  94. Dennerline, ‘Fiscal reform’, 110; Wakeman, Conflict and control, 12, quoting one of those flogged and barred from taking exams. Wakeman, op. cit., 10 n. 27, reports that at least one gentleman who protested against the tax demands called out under torture to the spirits of the Ming emperors, reinforcing belief that treason lay behind the protests.

  95. Shi and Liu ‘Estimation of the response of glaciers’, 668–9.

  96. CHC, IX, 144–5, contains a striking map of the suppression of the Three Feudatories. Di Cosmo, Diary, prints in English the campaign journal kept by a middle-rank Manchu officer in 1680 and 1681, with an impeccable introduction.

  97. On the emperor's tours, see Chang, A court on horseback, 75–86 and 117; Spence, Ts'ao-Yin, 125–8; and Dott, Identity reflections, 177–8 (quoting the diary).

  98. Marks, Tigers, 157–60 (Lingnan); Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 1,109 n. 77 (Sichuan).

  99. Beattie, ‘The alternative’, 266, quoting a genealogy from Dongcheng county; Dardess, A Ming society, 42, report of Shi Junchang.

  100. Peterson, ‘The life’, 149, quoting Gu's Memoirs. Lynn Struve estimated that the Mingmo zhonglie jishi (‘True record of Late Ming extreme loyalty’) submitted to the Kangxi emperor in 1702 included ‘biographies and brief biographical notices of about 575 men and 360 women who died righteously in connection with the fall of the Ming’: Struve, Ming-Qing conflict, 40–1 and 349–50.

  101. Nieuhof, An embassy, 48. On the millions enslaved in 1644–5 by the Qing and their Han allies, see Elliott, Manchu Way, 227–9; on the vigorous defence of the fugitive slave laws by the Shunzhi emperor in 1655, see Kessler, K'ang-hsi, 16–17.

  102. On slaves, see Mann, Precious records, 41 (on p. 242 n. 100, Mann notes that only after 1673 did the Qing Code forbid masters from having intercourse with their married slaves); on the rape clauses of the Qing Law Code issued in 1646, see Ng, ‘Ideology and sexuality’, who argues that these provisions reflected the new dynasty's concern to restrict the quantity of litigation: by increasing the burden of proof they hoped to deter legal suits.

  103. Brook, The troubled empire, 258, prints this poem, together with another by widow Shang Jinglan. For more on Huang Yuanjie (c. 1620–c. 1669), who left over 1,000 poems at her death, see Ko, Teachers, 117–23. Widmer, ‘The epistolary world’, analyzes the increase in letters written and published by women during the Ming-Qing Transition.

  104. Brook, Confusions of pleasure, 240–50. See also the similar lament of Xia Yungyi: page 115 above.

  105. Waley-Cohen, The culture of war, 13; Will, ‘Coming of age’, 38–9, quoting from a final section of Yao's Record, which enumerated the changes he had witnessed, explicitly comparing his experience under Ming and Qing.

  106. Brook, The troubled empire, 242, 249.

  Chapter 6 ‘The great shaking’

  1. Special thanks for help in preparing this chapter to Robert Frost, Przemysław Gawron, Dariusz Kołodziejczyk and James Lenaghan (on the Polish Commonwealth and Polish sources), and to Paul Bushkovitch, Irena Cherniakova, Chester Dunning, Mircea Platon, Matthew Romaniello, Mark Soderstrom and Kira Stevens (on Russia and Russian sources). I also thank Alison Anderson and Ardis Grosjean Dreisbach, respectively, for transcribing and translating German and Swedish documents, and Przemysław Gawron for translating Polish materials. Russia at this time used its own calendar, in which each year (counted from the Creation in 5508 BC) began on 1 September but in other respects followed the Julian Calendar, which Sweden also observed. In this chapter all dates have been converted to the Gregorian Calendar unless otherwise stated.

  2. Data from Hellie, Enserfment, 112; Eaton, ‘Decline’, 220–3; and Dunning, Russia's first civil war, 466. At p. 481. Dunning notes the use of ‘smuta’ by contemporaries.

  3. Olearius, Reisebeschreibung, 143; LeDonne, The Grand Strategy, 29–35; Hittle, The service city, 23.

  4. Baron, Travels, 120, quoting Olearius who had travelled through the grasslands himself in the 1630s. See also Davies, State, 30.

  5. Although primarily a geographic term in the seventeenth century, in this chapter, ‘Ukraine’ refers to the three palatinates of Kiev, Bratslaw and Volhynia (incorporated into Poland in 1569), plus the palatinate of Chernihiv (annexed from Russia at the truce of Deulino in 1618 and added to the other three in 1635). All four shared a common legal code and official language (Ruthenian) and overwhelmingly adhered to Orthodox Christianity. In this chapter, the term ‘Ruthenian’ refers to the Orthodox population of Ukraine.

  6. Romaniello, ‘Ethnicity as social rank’, notes that non-Russians often saw the agreements that made them part of the Muscovite state as ‘alliances’, not acts of submission, a classic characteristic of the ‘composite state’.

  7. Frost, The northern wars, 107, quoting Krzysztof Radziwill in 1622.

  8. RAS, Manuskriptsamlingen 68, Peter Loofeldt, ‘Initiarum Monarchiae Ruthenicae’, p. 99, on ‘zu Behauptunge ihren vermeinten kleinen Weldt’. The foreigners share the blame for their own ignorance: very few spoke Russian, and so, since virtually no Russians spoke any foreign language, most relied for information on professionals such as translators, doctors and military officers.

  9. I thank Matthew Romaniello for this information.

  10. Details in Kahan, ‘Natural calamities’, 371; Krenke, Izmenchivost' klimata, 87, 110, 113; Davies, State, 39; Stevens, Soldiers on the steppe, 42; and further data generously provided to me by Professor Stevens in Sep. 2004.

  11. Cherniakova, Karelia, 101–5, data from Zaonezhskii Pogosts, near Lake Onega.

  12. Hittle, The service city, 24; Hellie, ‘The costs’, 44; Stevens, Russia's wars, 132–8.

  13. Details from Davies, State, 1–12, 70–2, 75, and 172; Shaw, ‘Southern frontiers’; and Stevens, Soldiers, 34.

  14. Vernadsky, History, V, 368.

  15. Eaton, ‘Early Russian censuses’, 76–7; Hellie, Enserfment, 127–31. Moon, ‘Peasant migration’, 869, notes that migration involved a disproportionate number of healthy, young people who set up farmsteads and started families, but ‘left behind the older, weaker people, who had passed their fertile years and were likely to die sooner’. He therefore plausibly suggests that population south of the Oka grew more rapidly, while population further north declined more rapidly than one might have expected.

  16. Dunning, Russia's first civil war, 474, 464.

  17. Romaniello, ‘Through the filter’, 919–20, describing the ‘Stepennaia kniga’, a manuscript chronograph of almost 800 folios in the Hilandar Research Library of the Ohio State University, Aronov C
ollection, 18. Dunning, Russia's first civil war, 475, dates the first use of ‘Holy Russia’.

  18. Kivelson, ‘“The Devil stole his mind”’, 743.

  19. Hellie, Readings, 192–6 (the 1645 petition); Loewenson, ‘The Moscow rising’, 147 (the Swedish envoy).

  20. On the monopolies, see Hellie, The economy, 157 and 559 (salt) and 106–7 (tobacco). Torke, Die staatsbedingte Gesellschaft, 218–19, notes the unrest in autumn 1647.

  21. Torke, Die staatsbedingte Gesellschaft, 219.

  22. Baron, Olearius, 207. Torke, Die staatsbedingte Gesellschaft, 93–4, notes the significance of the presence in the capital in 1648 of the Moscow servitors who would normally have been deployed on the southern frontier.

  23. Baron, Olearius, 142, 149–50; Gordon, Diary, II, 139.

  24. Platonov, ‘Novyi istochnik’, 6–8: ‘Kurtze vndt warhaftige Beschreibung desz gefährlichen Auffleutes des Gemeinen Pöbels Moscow’. Both this source (a manuscript from a private collection in Stockholm) and a dispatch from Ambassador Pommerenning mention a ‘Supplication’ on this day, yet no separate ‘Supplication’ has survived: only the one presented on 12 June 1648. However, the ‘Beschreibung’ states that the Supplication presented on both days was the same, which seems plausible.

  25. RAS, Diplomatica: Muscovitica 39 contains the only surviving text of this document, a Swedish translation sent by Ambassador Karl Pommerenning to Queen Christina together with his letter of 16 July 1648 NS. Iakubov, ‘Rossiia i Shvetsiia’, printed a Russian translation of this Swedish text, and Hellie, Readings, 198–205, printed an English translation of Iakubov's Russian version. Since none of these texts seems reliable, I quote from a new translation of the Swedish original, and of Pommerenning's covering letter, prepared for me by Ardis Grosjean-Dreisbach. The key terms are ‘revolt’ (uppstånd), ‘great confusion’ (stoor oreeda), and ‘uprising and revolt’ (uppror och upstånd).