Routinization: Switching to a Safer Track
Karl Mannheim observed that "the fundamental tendency of all bureaucratic thought is to turn all problems of politics into problems of administration."83 By this he meant that bureaucrats are incapable of seeing beyond their "socially limited horizon," their rationally ordered sphere of work, to the clash of irrationally generated interests in the larger political world. I would credit Ch'ing bureaucrats with more insight and guile, and assume that they were quite capable of purposely redefining political problems as administrative problems.
In the soulstealing case, there are numerous instances in which bureaucrats did their best to channel the monarch's urgent, nonroutine demands into conventional, routine channels. After all, showing attention to duty was the next best thing to achieving concrete results, and a hard-pressed official had many routine activities in which he could busy himself, with minimal risk. For example, the pao-chia system of mutual responsibility had long been on the books but was always in need of updating and tightening up. The Nanking provincial treasurer dutifully suggested such a measure during the sorcery prosecution as a way of checking the backgrounds of all commoners in the Nanking area. Hungli saw the suggestion for what it was: a device to seem busy but avoid the unrewarding task of ferreting out soulstealers. Vermilion: "This is all empty talk. The habits of you provincial officials are really hateful."84 G'aojin himself was not above suggesting an empire-wide re-registration of monks and priests, most of whom were "failed literati" and whose heterodox ways did the populace much harm. G'aojin assured His Majesty that he dared not reply on "empty words." Vermilion: "You have not caught a culprit in ages. How can you say `no empty words'?" It was easy enough to unleash a routine crackdown on a vulnerable group, and the monarch plainly understood what was going on .115 A similar proposal, floated by the Chekiang provincial judge, suggested that monks and priests who lacked ordination certificates be required to carry travel passes with them on their wanderings.86
By routinizing the search for soulstealers, local bureaucrats were falling back on familiar techniques (such as pao-chia) that were not susceptible to short-term evaluation. An official could in any case count on having been transferred before the results could be assessed. The effect would be to divert a case from the emergency channel into the routine channel, where local bureaucrats were less vulnerable. This stratagem was not, however, notably successful in diverting the alert Hungli from his purpose.
The Bureaucratic Monarchy as a Social System
The documentary record of the soulstealing crisis projects a double image. The bolder lines depict the day-to-day prosecution of sorcery. The subtler pattern is the relationship among the writers and readers of documents. In this double image, we perceive the two aspects of the Chinese imperial state: as instrument (managing the realm in the interests of its proprietors, the Manchu monarchy and the Sino- Manchu elite); and as system (allocating power and status among political actors). The state-as-instrument (I shall call this "the government") fits our commonsense understanding of government: institutions set up to accomplish tasks such as collecting taxes, maintaining order, and waging war. The state-as-system (which I shall call "the bureaucratic monarchy") consists of relationships among men whose careers are measured by prestige and power, mobility and security, within a hierarchical order. Every document generated by an "event"-whether a routine report on taxes or an urgent report on insurrection-must be read both as description of an outer reality and as a reflection of the political needs of its author. ("Political needs," of course, were not necessarily narrow, selfish interests. They might also encompass the writer's principled defense of his institutional turf.) The interaction of men within the state-as-system was not insulated from "events" in the world of action. On the contrary, it was such "events" that made the two aspects of the state meaningful in terms of each other.
"Event" has a slippery meaning to us, but in Chinese bureaucratic practice it was a unit of accountability. It had a beginning (when someone could first be held accountable for it) and an end (when someone could be rewarded or punished for the way he handled it). An official's career was formally measured by his performance, and performance was measured by how well he handled specific tasks. Were taxes collected in full? Were crimes solved on time? Were rebellions forestalled or quelled? Were floods prevented or their victims relieved? A notable success or failure was, in terms of accountability, an "event." It was generally an "event" that gave one official an occasion to impeach another, or to patronize him by pointing to his merits. "Events" were opportunities not only to advance one's own fortunes but also to serve the needs of patrons and clients, and so to embroider the fabric of personal connections that sustained a man in public life.
So besides keeping the realm in order, the government had another role to play: it provided the symbolic resources for the operation of the bureaucratic monarchy. Just as the bureaucratic monarchy lived on the economic surplus of China's society, it depended on society for the "events" that served as raw material for the operation of its internal relationships. The internal machinery of the bureaucratic monarchy processed all such "events" and transformed them into power and status.
Like every other relationship in the bureaucratic monarchy, that between Throne and bureaucracy, the central axis of the system, consumed raw material in the form of "events." The monarch needed concrete occasions to assert his dominance over the bureaucracy, to punish men in his black book and to reward those in his favor. A provincial-level official was not merely a functionary in an organiza tion; his every public act was informed by the personal relationship he bore to his sovereign, a relationship confirmed by an imperial audience when he was appointed, and by regular audiences thereafter. The quality of this personal relationship and its complex interplay with the formal, "objective" structure of bureaucratic government was largely defined by the "events" in which the official participated. Only through "events" did the relationship become part of the documentary record.
Yet the bureaucratic monarchy was not simply a passive receptor of whatever its social environment might provide in the way of "events." Instead, men were capable of some selectivity in which "events" they chose to handle, and indeed in the way they defined them. An actor in this system could shape "events," redefine them, or even manufacture them, if that would redound to his advantage within the system. Similarly, it was possible to screen out "events" that were likely to harm one's interests. Of course, such selectivity could only operate within limits; a major popular uprising could be neither cooked up nor screened out. But both monarch and bureaucrat could use the documentary system to influence the way an event was defined or perceived. The soulstealing crisis could certainly be manipulated this way. Popular panic forced it to the surface of public life. Yet the meaning attached to sorcery by the bureaucratic monarchy was clearly influenced by the needs of the various actors within it. All who handled this "event" appear to have done so with an eye to power and status relations within the official world.
What I am suggesting is that, besides being a genuinely urgent problem for government, the sorcery crisis of 1768 provided an outlet for Hungli's deepest misgivings about the state. To say that Hungli intentionally used the soulstealing crisis to whip his bureaucracy into line would be to reach beyond the evidence. The evidence does show, however, that Hungli was used to thinking about bureaucracy in a language born of his inmost concerns: routinization and assimilation; and that the power of this language-to define and to motivategrew enormously in an environment of political crime.
The link between sorcery and Hungli's deeper anxieties about the empire is to be seen in his vermilion rescripts. He wrote them quickly: no drafts, no drafters. There, in the bare outcroppings of his thought, are his spontaneous perceptions of the issues before him. The context of these rescripts was the prosecution of sorcerers, but the content was the control of bureaucrats. Hungli detested sorcery and feared its effects. But his reaction to it was colored by what h
e thought were the persistent ills of his realm: routinization, assimilation, the baleful effects of Kiangnan culture, all of which mocked royal power. The language by which he goaded his officials to action against sorcery shared the tone, and indeed the vocabulary, of his long-term frustration with the bureaucracy. He could vent this frustration only in the context of concrete events. Now, in the context of this one, a political crime, the vocabulary was about bureaucratic behavior.
Yet how far could the monarch push such a tainted case without raising doubts about his own behavior? As the case collapsed, the Throne had to be shielded from falling debris. Embarrassed and angry, Hungli ended the soulstealing prosecution with a search for scapegoats in the bureaucracy. But he wanted it both ways. Governor Funihan had misled him by suggesting that soulstealers' confessions had been extracted without the use of torture, and the man had to be degraded and humiliated. Other bureaucrats, however, had abused his trust by failing to prosecute the case vigorously enough. This negligence had allowed sorcery to spread around the empire. Only by punishing officials who had shown laxity toward sorcery could he demonstrate, to his descendants no less than to his contemporaries, that he had been right to prosecute the case in the first place.
As a final flourish, the monarch's fury focused on the newly appointed governor of Shansi, Surde, fresh from six years of service as provincial treasurer in Soochow and already under fire for tardy reportage of sorcery cases. He had memorialized on Shansi soulstealing only after Hungli had raised the matter. Vermilion: "This shows that you haven't rid yourself of the hateful habits of deceit you picked up in Kiangnan.""' When the case finally collapsed, Surde was singled out for special abuse. He "had served in Kiangsu the longest," and had been "deep-dyed with the ways of the hateful [Kiangnan] clique." When the soulstealing affair first emerged, he did not report it (although he was still serving in Soochow at the time). Later, as Shansi governor, even numerous cases of sorcery did nothing to change his ways. He had "impeded the prosecution most profoundly." Hungli demoted him to the rank of provincial judge and sent him to an unpleasant post in remote Sinkiang."" What better place to scourge Kiangnan decadence from a bannerman's soul?
CHAPTER 10
Theme and Variations
Chinese culture was unified but not homogeneous. That, I think, is why there could occur a society-wide experience such as the soulstealing crisis, even while different social groups represented that experience in different ways.' We have had occasion to observe the cultural disparities between silk-gowned inquisitor and ragged prisoner. But social distance did not mean mutual incomprehension. Sometimes it meant different configurations of commonly available symbols. Though the "evil arts" were feared and detested by all, the components of sorcery lore were arranged by each social group to fit its own view of the world. That is why an "event" like the sorcery scare could "happen" to both prince and peasant, but to each in his own terms. The different expressions of this event sprang from different social roles and life experiences. Seen in this light, the soulstealing theme was given voice through different stories, each of which expressed the fears of 'a particular group. The theme they had in common was danger from persons unknown and forces unseen.
The Throne: Shadow and Substance
Trying to plumb Hungli's state of mind, we begin with the fact that soulstealing scares occurred at least twice thereafter: in i 8 i o and again in 1876. On neither occasion did the court seize the issue and make a national campaign of it. Reigning in i8io was Hungli's son, Yungyan (the Chia-Ch'ing emperor), who refused to get alarmed by rumors of queue-clipping sorcery. Similar oddities had arisen in 1768, he wrote, and his august father had "ordered restraint in prosecuting them"(!). Then they gradually ceased of their own accord. Now Yungyan expressly forbade local officials to "prosecute through implication" (chu-lien ken-chiu, to generate a chain of accusations by forcing suspects to reveal their associates, as had been done in 1768, and, later, in the aftermath of the Eight Trigrams revolt of 1813). Instead, they were to make discreet. inquiries and secret reports, to avoid "yamen underlings' victimizing innocent people" and stirring up public disorder (as had, in fact, happened at the outbreak of the great White Lotus uprising of 1796). In the end, the affair came to nothing.2
The cases of 18 76 occurred during the minority of the Kuang-hsu emperor. During this period, China was ruled by a regency in which the dowager empress, Tz'u-hsi, was becoming increasingly powerful. The Ch'ing regime was struggling with the effects of internal rebellions and foreign aggression. One particularly irksome effect was the social conflict between Christian converts and other commoners, which sometimes sparked violent riots. These factors lay in the background of the spring queue-clipping panic ithat broke out in Nanking and then spread through the Yangtze provinces. Authorities reported that some of those arrested had confessed to being members of sects or of secret societies. The "evil arts" in this case involved attaching human hair to wooden or paper figures, which would then (after suitable incantations) come alive and serve their masters as armed retainers. Some people also believed that queues were being clipped by paper mannikins sent forth by sorcerers. Governor-general Shen Pao-then believed that these sorcerers came from the White Lotus tradition. Those whose guilt was "proved" were summarily beheaded (an aspect of provincial power that had greatly expanded since the Taiping Rebellion), "in order to settle the minds of the people." The problem for local officials was, as always, to find a middle ground between prosecuting those denounced as sorcerers (and thus risking miscarriages of justice), and letting them go (and thus risking the anger of the people).
Feelings were inflamed by the missionary presence. Many commoners believed that Catholic missions and their Chinese converts were busily engaged in sorcery, and the popular antisorcery movement therefore took on an anti missionary animus. The situation was made worse, according to Shen, when sorcerers or gangsters became Christian converts to escape prosecution. What the court needed least, at this point, was mob violence against missions, which would provoke foreign powers to intervene. Commoners were therefore warned not to "grasp the wind and seize the shadows" (that is, make up wild unfounded stories). Instructions from Peking forbade official laxity, but they even more forcefully forbade mob action."
On neither occasion did the 'Throne undertake a campaign remotely resembling Hungli's of' 1768, in each case for excellent reasons. But in addition to having reasons not to undertake it, the rulers of these later eras evidently lacked good reasons to undertake it. We are now left with the question: what was it about Hungli's outlook, or the situation he confronted, that led him to respond to sorcery as he did?
It may be no coincidence that Hungli's two most implacable prosecutions of sedition occurred in the wake of frustrating military campaigns, in which the monarch was deeply chagrined by the performance of his armies. The crisis of 1751-52, which included the Bogus Memorial case and the frantic search for Ma Ch'ao-chu, came shortly after a protracted struggle to subdue the Chin-ch'uan aborigines of western Szechwan. So costly and futile were Ch'ing attacks on the Chin-ch'uan wilderness strongholds that Hungli executed his two top generals for allegedly having botched the campaign. The crisis of 1768 occurred while the campaign against King Aungzeya of Burma seemed hopelessly mired in the malarial jungles, and after Hungli had exposed his own field commanders as incompetents and liars. As the Ch'ing armies floundered, might Hungli's fury and frustration have spilled over into domestic politics?4
Though such frustration may have added steam to Hungli's antisorcery campaign, the actual content of the campaign had its own logic. Hungli's fears were part substance, part shadow. The substance was the difficulty of breaking through the bureaucracy's self-serving and routine-ridden habits. The interests of the Throne had to be boosted by repeated injections of autocratic, unpredictable power, which were best administered in the context of political crime. The shadow (and who can certify the unreality of shadows?) was the fear of forces unseen: sorcery, of course, but also the twin menace
s of sedition and assimilation. Even as sinicized a Manchu ruler as Hungli could not dissociate sedition from the ethnic factor, and a case involving the symbolism of the queue was a perfect lightning rod for his suspicions. Lurking beside sedition was assimilation, a threat slower-acting but more insidious. Hungli's response was partly cultural (championing Manchu language and. history, and launching a literary inquisition to root out supposed anti-Manchu slurs in books all over the empire); and partly political (stamping out "bad practices" characteristic of the worst of the Han bureaucracy).
Kiangnan was the link. From the rich and cultured lower Yangtze provinces, danger was making its way northward through the counties bordering the Grand Canal. In the South, as Hungli saw it, Han bureaucratic culture was to be found at its worst: decadent, refractory, clique-ridden, timid, and mendacious. Sturdy bannermen could fall under its spell, and his harshest language was reserved for Manchu officials who had been bewitched by Kiangnan culture. From Kiangnan was spreading something evil: signaled in the bureaucracy by decadent values, and in the world of shadows by sorcery. It may be objected that Hungli "really believed" in the first danger, but not the second. Yes, he was officially a scoffer: sorcery was bunk, an "absurd" superstition. Yet there are personal notes on memorials that reveal his lively interest in the details of how sorcery was practiced, and to what end.5 Did he "believe"? Better ask, did the magic of sorcerers seem to him less plausible than the bewitchments of Han culture? Did the theft of men's souls by sorcerers seem less plausible than the theft of Manchu virtue by Han decadence?
Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Page 26
