The History of China - #273 - Qing 15: Something Rotten In the Heir

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

With border disputes and foreign affair emergencies levelling off, the Kangxi Emperor is able to turn his attentions inward toward the domestic, the home and hearth. But it's not all bbqs and pickleball there, either - there's the questions of succession, for one... who will be next when Kangxi is no more? And an heir there is... but... does something seem a little *off* about the crown-prince?? Time Period Covered: ~1660-1722 CE Major Historical Figures: The Kangxi Emperor (Xuanye) [r. 1661-1722] Yunreng, Heir-apparent [1674-1725] Prime Minister Songgotu [1636-1703] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the History of China. Episode 273, Something Rotten in the Air. We last left off with our deep dive into the long and fruitful reign of the fourth emperor of Great Qing, Kangxi, well into his mid-reign,

capping off with the physical consolidation of the realm once and for all, with the conclusion of the internal revolts of the southern feudatories, as well as the strife amongst the Mongols in the northwest. Today, then, we will conclude our little run with the Kangxi Emperor's more than six decades on the Dragon Throne, specifically by looking at the factional politics of his later reign, his administrative methods, the sorts of culture and learning he promoted, and finally, of course, his successional plans, or lack thereof, that would define much of the period after his passing. So let's go ahead and launch right in.

The interconnections between administrative changes and factional alliances were always close throughout the Kangxi reign. From the first years of his reign, when the Oboi and Sonai factions split their solid front of the regents after the death of the Shunzhi Emperor, the pattern was apparent. In the guise of presenting their ideas as being the Shunzhi Emperor's own deathbed statement, the regents condemned Shunzhi for failing to follow the heroic example of his Manchu forebears, for employing inept Jinxia officials, that is to say, Chinese mandarins, and for instituting a series of policies that harken back to the last years of the Ming. They especially blamed him for relying on eunuchs in matters that were not purely internal to the palace. To remedy this sorry state of affairs, the regents had set about restoring the management of the imperial household

to what they believed to be its proper state. The 13-yaman structure, developed in the late 1650s to bring more levels of financial power under eunuch control, were abolished, and the Xunzhi Emperor's favorite eunuch, Wu Liangfu, was subsequently executed. The system of storage and accounting was placed more firmly in Manchu hands, and more bond servants, or baoyi, Manchu, Mongol, and Jinshe, were employed in assignments for the imperial households in the provinces. Various offices within the Grand Secretariat and in the Hanlin Academy itself, which had been reinstituted on Ming Dynasty lines

during the late Xunzhi reign, were again abolished and replaced by the so-called Three Inner Courts, in which Manchus were to have numerical parity with Jinxia in senior positions. Also, the bureau designated by Hong Taiji to handle border affairs with the Mongols, the Li Fanyuan, which was staffed by Manchus and

Mongols but not by Han Jinshe, was elevated to a status parallel to that of the six ministries, and was placed ahead of the censorate in the metropolitan bureaucracy table of organization. In related moves designed to highlight the importance of Manchu tradition as opposed to the Jinshe, tax-delinquent landowners in the Yangtze Delta were fined, often after draconian investigations. The number of Jinshe examination degrees awarded was drastically reduced, Tax-delinquent landowners in the Yangtze Delta were fined, often after draconian investigations, the number of Jinxia examination degrees awarded was drastically reduced, the eight-legged SA system was abolished, and the forms of bureaucratic elevation were altered to give more power to the regents in assessing career performance. Despite the consistency of many of the regents' proposals for strengthening elements of Manchu presence within the Qing polity,

the regents themselves seldom acted in concert. Their backgrounds and lineage connections were different, and their characters varied greatly. While Oboi was the most martial and perhaps mentally the toughest, Suk Saha was more of a political opportunist, and Sony the most diplomatic and intellectually versatile. Ebalun remains a shadowy figure, living off of inherited honors rather than the fruits of recent accomplishment, though he was a loyal friend of Oboi, and both of them were in the Manchu border yellow banner, and thus held various economic interests in common. Inevitably, the regents struggled with each other for long-term control over the boy emperor,

and marriage politics played their role. Soni seems to have gained the victory here, in that he arranged for his granddaughter to be married to the Kangxi emperor as the Empress Xiaozeng in 1665. By contrast, Ebalun had to be content with seeing his own daughter made into a lower ranking consort, and Oboi was marrying off his nephew to one of the Xinzhe Emperor's daughters. The regents also quarreled over the plan by Oboi and Ebalun to redistribute certain important blocks of banner land in favor of their own bordered Yellow Banner, and there were numerous minor conflicts between the region's retainers and confederates.

If the regions formed, for a time, a sometimes united faction, to break their power, the young Kangxi Emperor needed his own power base, and this explains the importance in his life of his grandmother, the Empress Dowager Xiao Zhuang. Linking grandmother and grandson were selected officers from within the three-tiered

ranks of the Imperial Palace Guards. Members of this inner elite, often descended from powerful warrior families prominent in the conquest of the Ming, were able to move freely within the Imperial Palace complex and amingle informally with the boy emperor on hunting expeditions and other military exercises. Perhaps the most important of these guards were officers Songgotu and Mingzhu, but several others, such as Bandi, Bolote, Udan, and Tuichin, can be identified as imperial favorites in the early years of the reign. Many of them remained close to the Kangxi Emperor until their deaths, and they gave him a network of supporters that cut across Manchu lineage lines.

Several of this group were promoted to the highest positions, as directors of the imperial household, as senior generals in the Eight Banners, or as ministers in the regular bureaucracy. The Kangxi Emperor's immediate moves to cancel the regent's reforms in the imperial household were linked to this group of supporters. Ma Si, Ma Wu, and others who supported an activist role against the three feudatories were prominent here, as were the men the Kangxi Emperor chose to be his leading generals in the war against Wusanggui, especially Giesu and Yolo. So was Tongguowei, brother to the Kangxi Emperor's mother and also a guards officer in the 1660s, whose own son, Longguo, and nephew, Ollondai, were to play crucial roles in the political battles over succession to the throne in the Kangxi Emperor's old age. Even from such a brief summary, we can see that Manchu politics during the early Kangxi reign

were conducted in a spirit of intense factional strife. Though all the infighting and alliances cannot be reconstructed in full detail, there were numerous occasions when the hostility flared out in open denunciations and even impeachments, giving us a sense of the stakes and the personalities involved. At such times, the emperor usually responded vigorously, removing the offending group from office and appointing new men in their stead. So repetitive was this pattern, and so predictable were the Kangxi emperor's responses, that one is tempted to characterize the political changes at court

as a sequence of changing Manchu-dominated ministries under a single imperial chief executive. From the suppression of the Three Feudatories Rebellions by 1681 down to the year 1688, the most important group at court centered around Ming Ju from the Nara clan. We can judge from Ming Ju's rapid promotions that he had been one of the key persons aiding the Kangxi Emperor to break free of Oboi, and he had gained additional credit from the Emperor for taking a hard line against Wu Sangui. The ostensible reason for the fall of Ming Juhu's party was a series of corrupt actions brought to the Kangxi emperor's notice by the imperial censor Guo Xiu. Though none of the name offenders were seriously punished, all of them were dismissed or demoted.

Besides Mingzhu, three other grand secretaries with high seniority fell, Lei Dehun, Yu Guozhu, and Li Zifang. There were also numerous dismissals and transfers among the ranks of the ministers and vice-ministers of the six ministries, so many, in fact, that clearly some kind of purge had taken place. In the middle of this crisis, January 1688, the Kangxi Emperor's grandmother died after being a great support to him throughout his entire life, and her death left him bereft. Whether this influenced his behavior in the anti-Mingzhu shakeup cannot be precisely demonstrated. Certainly during Mingzhu's

period in power, both Mingzhu personally and many of his children and colleagues amassed major fortunes. After his dismissal, Mingzhu continued to be involved in numerous business enterprises, including the monopoly distribution of salt and his huge personal fortune ensuring his continued prestige. He was also able to arrange the best possible Jinxia classical education for his sons, two of whom, Xingde and Kui Xu, would go on to become distinguished poets. From the political fall of Mingzhu in 1688 down to 1708, the world of Manchu power politics centered around the heir apparent, Yin Zhen, and his various rivals. Yin Zhen was born in 1674, the Kangxi Emperor's second surviving son, but the first born to an empress, although she did die on the day of his birth.

He was named heir apparent in 1676. Assigned to a truly lustrous array of scholarly tutors by his father, including Chang Ying, Li Guangji, and Xiong Zili. Yinzhen served as acting regent in Beijing during 1696 and 1697, while his father was absent on the campaigns against Gaodan and the Mongols. Thereafter, the Manchu Grandees coalesced into two factional groupings, one centered around Songgotu, who as a guards officer had helped the Kangxi Emperor break Oboy. Songgotu's niece was the heir apparent to Yinzhen's mother, and thus Songgotu, who as a guards officer had helped the Kangxi Emperor break Oboi. Songgotu's niece was the heir apparent Yinzhen's mother, and thus Songgotu had close personal connections to the young prince. The other major faction centered around the able administrator Ma Si, son of Mi Shan, the anti-Wusangwe stalwart.

Ma Si had become chief of the censorate in the purge year of 1688 and minister of war in 1691. During 1696 and 1697, the Kangxi Emperor assigned Ma Se to keep an eye on the heir apparent, Yin Zhen. Perhaps because he learned too much at that time about the heir apparent's failings, Ma Se became an antagonist of Yin Zhen, and hence of Songgotu, becoming instead a leader amongst those who swung to support Yin Zhen's younger brother, the Emperor's eighth son, Yin Shu, as a counter-successor to the throne. New and bitter notes were introduced into factional fights after 1703 because of the mounting controversies over the fitness of the heir apparent to rule. Songgotu fell in 1703 and died, or was killed, in prison for backing Yinzhen too eagerly.

Two surviving reports in Manchu, dated late August and early September of 1703, show that at the time, Song-Ga-Tu was still alive, though kept shackled hand and foot to one of his accomplices in a special jail in the imperial household department. The remarks of his accomplice suggest that the two had already been incarcerated for over a year, and the reporters, which were in fact the emperor's third and fourth sons, state that Song-Ga-Tu wept and begged for clemency. The heir apparent is not mentioned by name, but the investigators were clearly trying to track down anyone who might have been relaying messages

or information into Songgotu's prison chambers. They were also tracking down Songgotu's supporters, interrogating them, and unraveling the complexities of Songgotu's business empire scattered across several provinces, along with identifying the managers who handled his businesses for him. Unmoved by the personal details, the Kangji Emperor merely commented dryly that the investigation was confused and should be pushed more rigorously at a later date. Thereafter, Songgotu disappears from the historical record. In 1708, when the Emperor made the decision to dismiss Yinzhen as heir apparent, Maza

and his supporters were disgraced for daring to suggest that the eighth son, Yin Xu, should be chosen as the future emperor. In 1712, when Yinzhen was deposed for a second and final time, the general in charge of the troops in Beijing, Tohochi, and several other generals and ministers were executed. Thereafter, though factions continued to form around the Kangxi emperor's eighth son, and a couple of other brothers, the bureaucracy was fragmented, and no clear decision on the heir apparent question had been taken when the Kangxi Emperor died in 1722. Song Jue's disappearance after 1703 may be taken as a dividing point between the old politics and the new. Before that time, the Kangxi Emperor trusted various groups of ministers in turn, and seems to have been at least tacitly receptive to factional interests.

For the earlier period, we can trace Manchu baronial factions, led by great generals and powerful clan leaders or imperial relatives, just as we can trace groups in the government coalescing around such figures as Gao Xieqi and the Xu brothers. After 1703, many of the Emperor's edicts betray real fear and anger. For many of the later years of his life, he seems to have been truly fearful that some combination of his son's backers would try to assassinate him. It does not seem accidental that it was during this later period of Kangxi's reign that the confidential palace memorial system was developed as a major source of intelligence gathering. Over the years that important shifts were taking place among Manchu

factions, the emperor also sought to develop a group of Jinxia advisors. The courageous scholar, Xiong Zili, who dared to memorialize in 1667 to the regents that the Kangxi emperor should be permitted to take the reins of government in person, might have been seen as the first of this group. In Xiong's old age, the emperor took care to have his bond servants report confidentially on Xiong's health and resources. But Xiong always kept an independent scholarly base and stance, so it's more appropriate to identify Gao Xieqi as the emperor's first scholarly favorite. Gao has been identified as a former slave of Songgotu.

In terms of the administrative system, Gao is the first of a succession of Jinxia confidants to the emperor in a line that ran through Changying and Xu Quanshui to Wang Hongxu. These men helped the emperor with his classical studies at the highest level and also provided him with confidential information on political developments in the court and the provinces, supplementing the data he might receive from the regular sources, such as the censorette.

The imperial southern study became a new base of political influence within the Forbidden City itself, and its staff members were constantly available for informal consultation with the Emperor. Overlapping to some extent with the Southern Study, or at least acting as a conduit for talented personnel toward it, was another group whose influence was at times important in factional struggles and within the administrative structure. This consisted of those few Manchus and Jinshu who worked in the office for the compiling of imperial diaries, or the Chiju-Chu. Often bilingual, in almost constant daily attendance on the emperor, privy to confidential information, and responsible for the historiographical image of the reign,

they had a web of contacts inside the Hanlin Academy as well as throughout the bureaucracy. When the Kangxi Emperor was at the height of his uncertainty over his handling of the Three Feudatories crisis, he used diarists in addition to trusted guard officers to acquire crucial information. Their influence probably waned as the Emperor grew more assertive using Jinxia language and began to spend more time with staff members in the Southern Study. Bitter attacks on eunuchs and the execution of Wuliangfu had been central acts in the aggressively Manchu stance of the regents at the beginning of the reign,

and an ongoing wariness about the role of eunuchs in the fall of the Ming dynasty persisted long after the Kangxi Emperor rejected many of the regents' imperial household reforms. Nevertheless, certain eunuchs exerted influence during the Kangxi reign. Besides Zhang Xincheng's role in the young emperor's education and Gu Wensheng's in receiving and relaying news of the emperor's feelings and actions on the 1697 Galdan campaign, there are several other eunuchs who can be traced in the records as filtering information through to selected officials, keeping an eye on the Manchuginsha disputants, or relaying confidential edicts to key political figures. At the very least, this list includes Li Yu and Liang Jiugong, who performed crucial assignments for the emperor, along with the eunuch Cun Xu,

who directed the inner memorial receiving office during the second half of the Kangxi reign. The shift in the memorial system that was to have such an impact on the Kangxi emperor's knowledge of factional politics seems to have begun almost accidentally in 1693, when the textile commissioner of Suzhou, named Li Xu, sent the emperor some extra information about weather conditions and local grain price fluctuations in one of his routine greeting memorials. The textile commissioner of Nanjing, Cao Yin, followed suit, as did Sun Wancheng of Hangzhou. By the mid-1690s,

the emperor had expanded the system to senior officials throughout the provinces and was receiving a stream of information not only from the economically vital Jiangnan area, but also from key military areas from Yunnan to Gansu. These secret palace memorials, or zouche, were delivered by the center's own confidential servants in special containers to specifically designated guard officers and eunuchs in the palace. After the emperor had read them in private, he returned the originals with his personal annotations in vermilion ink by the same hand to the original sender. By the late 1690s, and perhaps earlier, this system had come to include the Southern Study officials, who used the Southern Study as a dropping-off point for confidential reports of their own. The importance of this development was confirmed after 1707,

when Wang Hongshu began to report, obliquely, it's true, out of fear of the consequences, on the erratic and immoral behavior of the heir apparent. Alarming disclosures had been made about the arrogance of Yinzhen and his maternal uncle, Songgotu, and in 1703, the Kangxi Emperor had the latter imprisoned, despite his prestige and age. Further reports on Yinzhen's sexual improprieties on a western tour to Xi'an in 1703

angered the Emperor even more. But it was only in 1707 when Wang Hongshu listed several improprieties committed by a certain person, including the purchase of young boys from the Suzhou area, and identified a man named Fan Pu as the chief procurer, that the emperor publicly ordered Yinzhen deprived of the title of heir apparent and placed under house arrest. From the deep fear of discovery that Wang expressed in these memorials, and from the Kangxi emperor's repeated reassurances that the correspondence was being conducted in total secrecy, we can guess that the number one man referred to in one of these documents was in fact the heir apparent, Yin Zhen, especially as some of the

charges of sexual misconduct later brought against Yin Zhen coincide with Wang's disclosures. The emperor's endorsement on this memorial, in vermilion ink and cursive writing, is perhaps the most secret comment that he ever wrote that will come down to us. It says, quote, Still not a person knows about this Fan Pu business. If anyone spoke out about it, it was not Guards Officer Ma Wu. So the number one man does not have an inkling of who brought up this information. End quote.

Apart from this fleeting glimpse of the Kangxi Emperor in operation, Apart from this fleeting glimpse of the Kangxi Emperor in operation with this intelligence source, we know nothing definite about the pattern of intrigues that led to Injun's downfall. But that glimpse is enough. When added to the evidence about practical administrative affairs that we can learn from the other surviving palace memorials to demonstrate that with the Kangxi Emperor, we can truly talk of personal government. As for the then-Crown Prince Injun himself and his apparent role in this, the evidence seems damning enough. In the violent and angry debates that poisoned the atmospheric court for the rest of the reign

and led to the imprisonment and death of many of Injun's supporters, the secret memorials played an important role, as did a select group of loyal guard officers and eunuchs who supervised the major meetings in which decisions about the heir apparent were discussed. The nature of these conflicts and the way that the emperor chose to handle them inevitably meant that the power of the grand secretariat as a central clearinghouse was significantly impaired, along with that of the ministers and vice ministers of the six ministries. Conventional bureaucratic practice was further modified by the Kangxi

emperor's habit of appointing special commissioners to attend to almost any crisis situation, and he seems to have appointed these men entirely on his own advisement, often using guard officers or quite junior officials. A few censors, such as Guo Xiu, attained considerable renown through their use of conventional channels of criticism and policy recommendations, but in the main, it seems to have been those with the strong networks of contacts running across the entire bureaucracy who attained the most influence. Examples would include the three Xu brothers, Quan Shui, Bing Yi, and Yuan Wan, who held an overlapping series of appointments in ministries, manipulative politicians with special imperial

backing such as Li Guangdi and Chang Penguo, or the families of those like Mingzhu and Nian Shaling, favored either by the emperor or one of his sons, who combined banner positions with regular bureaucratic rank. In public, by rhetoric and by direct action, in the matter of both provincial and metropolitan appointments, the Kangxi Emperor kept alive the notion of an elaborate balance between Manchus, Mongols, and Han-Jun bannermen on the one hand, and the examination route Han civilian officials on the other. Just below this public bureaucratic surface, he was waging a series of tense battles with various members of his own family, the military establishment, and the civil bureaucracy. The Injeon-era parent crisis, which also involved the Kangxi Emperor's eldest, fourth, eighth, ninth, and fourteenth sons, almost totally dominated the politics of the last decade of the reign.

Even complex factional and bureaucratic conflicts, such as those that flared between Gali and Zhang Boxing in Jiangnan during 1712, may be traced in part back to Ga Li's relationship with Yin Zhen. Some of the Kangxi Emperor's comments in Manchu also show that he was well aware that even his confidential bondservant textile commissioners had various direct dealings with the heir apparent. Factionalism was present even within the system designed to prevent it. The charges of corruption that were leveled against the Xu brothers, Guo Xiao, Ming Zhu, and many of Song Guotu's and Yin Zhen's henchmen

point to another pervasive problem for the emperor, the difficulty of deciding when to condone an official and when to condemn him. Accurate information was essential to effective central control, and the Kangxi emperor used a variety of methods to keep himself informed. Private conversations at court audiences, informal discussions on hunting trips, and careful observation of the towns and countryside in north and central China on the many tours that he made during his reign. Supplemented by often lengthy interviews with incumbent or retired local officials in the towns he passed through. But the bulk of his information came from the flow of memorials, both regular and secret,

that enabled him to follow not only the faction-ridden succession struggles, but also the routine matters of local finances and the personal behavior and characteristics of his officials. The accumulated charges leveled against the family of Xu Quanshui during the years 1689-91 by various commoners and junior degree holders in the counties of Kunshan and Taichung, Jiangsu, served to illustrate the general scale of the problem. These charges, in most of which the accuser is named and at least one other local resident was willing to appear as a witness for the prosecution, show that the younger relatives

of the Xu family tyrannized the area. A common technique was to use the threat of violence to force local residents to make over the deeds of their property to members of the Xu family. Those who resisted were beaten, sometimes to death, or else had their buildings wrecked or burned. Another technique was to compel people to take loans or to lure them into contracting gambling debts and then use the threat or reality of physical violence to keep them paying exorbitant rates of interest.

There were also many complaints of rape. One plaintiff appended to his charges a list of those men in the area who worked together in these illegal activities. This list included a couple of literati, but was mainly composed of local Tufts who were associated in one way or another with the staffs of the various Yamen in the district, both official clerks and professional secretaries. Other documents show that the Xu family could call on a gang of about 50 men when they wished to assault someone. Such documents can be corroborated by a number of other sources and sometimes by secret memorials. Judicial proceedings in Beijing itself were frequently disrupted by mounted men who reviled

and threatened officials who seemed inclined to oppose the wishes of certain powerful families. Elsewhere, children of both sexes were purchased, and in some cases kidnapped or forcibly purchased from respectable homes to be shipped to Tianjin and sold. Such abuses sometimes were offshoots of the political situation in the capital. Though the Xu family was among the most powerful in Jiangsu from around 1675 to 1690, they moved constantly in and out of overlapping factional groupings. Xu Qianshui first allied with Mingzhu against Songgotu. After Songgotu lost imperial favor in 1683, Xu joined forces with Xiangzili and Liguangji to oppose Mingzhu, and they finally managed to have Mingzhu ousted for corruption in 1688.

Mingzhu, through relatives still in office, managed to have Xu and his brothers dismissed only two years later. The emperor's confidant, Gao Shixi, also fell out of favor after corruption charges were leveled against him at the same time, leaving Changying and Li Guangji as the two leading Jinshi officials at court. Any summary of Kangxi politics is inadequate. Scores of junior officials were removed or transferred in each of these major shuffles, and we cannot neglect the complex role of powerful censors like Guo Xiu, who instigated many of the proceedings that later led to these men's downfall.

The political scene included Manchus who held office as grand secretaries or ministers, Manchus who were chamberlains of the imperial household, trusted guard officers, and commanding generals of banners. It also included members of the imperial family, the fathers and other relations of the empresses and concubines, and the emperor's own sons who were growing up by this time and beginning to assemble their own cliques. Some of these senior officials accumulated enormous fortunes while in office.

We have considerable detail about several of them. Besides this large house in the northwest of the outer city of Beijing, Gao Xixi had other residential holdings in Beijing, as well as a partnership in a satin-selling operation capitalized at 400,000 taels. In Zhejiang, he had an estimated 15,000 acres of land, as well as estates in Hangzhou and Suzhou. He also had bought into various other ventures, including threshing mills, which he operated through agents.

Xu Qianshui had large amounts of capital in the cotton and salt trade, as well as pawn shops, Beijing residential properties, including the construction of new houses, and large land holdings in Jiangsu. Mingzhu was even wealthier and extended his fortune by working closely with the An family, who dominated the salt trade in Jili province. The officials worked with underlings and agents through nicknames and pseudonyms, borrowing and loaning money, bringing pressure to bear on local officials at key moments, even using government money as investment capital. The emperor does not seem to have felt that such going-ons were particularly reprehensible.

Officials guilty of extensive corruption were sometimes dismissed in order to return home, but not usually punished in any other way or even fined. Throughout his reign, the county emperor accepted large donations from his officials, even though he knew that they came from the exploitation of the communities that they were administering. This leniency was not extended to cases when corruption was practiced by officials who were also involved in one of the cliques centered on the Kangxi Emperor's sons. The problem of the imperial succession dominated politics from 1703 until the Emperor's death in 1722. When Manchu officers like Chishu or Tohochi who were involved in the heir apparent controversy were accused of corrupt

practices, they were executed. The Kangxi emperor was content to tolerate a certain level of corruption, but he encouraged censors and others to bring information about corruption to his attention so that when it suited him, he could use it as a pretext for removing someone from office. The Kangxi Emperor did not make any dramatic changes to the financial organization of the empire after his accession. He abandoned the vigorous pursuit of tax-delinquent landowners in Jiangnan that had been initiated by his regents, and after the final defeat of the Zheng family and the conquest of Taiwan, allowed a return of the coastal population to their towns and villages. His reign then witnessed a steady growth of overseas trade, especially with Southeast Asia.

Administration of river control, managed at times by exceptionally able men like Jin Fu, remained largely unchanged, though the emperor's interest in Western techniques for measuring river flow and surveying riverine courses had some beneficial effects. Basic patterns of taxation were maintained. Rural areas suffered on the margin between tax deficits and food shortages, and with the carrot of tax relief to select localities ever dangled before the local landowning families and the officials who oversaw them. The emperor had a compassionate side and took an interest in food prices, weather conditions, and water supplies. He ordered a level of famine relief of one sheng of grain per diem for each famine victim, which seems to have been double the rate prevailing in the later Qianlong reign. Nonetheless, his reign is full of instances of the gravest deprivation accompanied quite often

by famine conditions that the bureaucracy seemed ineffective in managing. In the second half of the 17th century, there was a depression brought on by a decline in population during the warfare in the period of the dynastic transition, a harsh mix of unemployment and labor scarcity at the same time, and a steady rise in the value of silver in relationship to copper cash. These factors significantly lowered land prices and the purchases of agricultural land, and turned investors away from the land and back to speculative trade venues, to the hoarding of silver, or

to usury. It's possible that on this particular topic, the emperor had been sensitized by the major mutiny that broke out in Wutong in the summer of 1688. The mutineers, numbering more than 10,000 at their peak, were former troops of the Green Standard Army that had been demobilized following the suppression of the Three Feudatories Rebellion. They seized the capital city of Hubei in an attempt to recover arrears of pay and receive food for their families. The Kangxi Emperor took the mutiny with the utmost seriousness.

He not only carefully monitored the campaign to ensure the marshalling of adequate government force, but also established careful procedures to screen out the misled local populace from the inner core of mutinous former army men. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore the tales of this amazing culture, from the legendary days of creation and the gods, all the way to Cleopatra, and everything in between. The History of Egypt podcast is written and produced by a trained Egyptologist. We go much deeper than your average documentary or magazine article to uncover tales of life, great endeavors, and the amazing arc of a mighty

kingdom. The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt and experience a legendary culture. The way that the Kangxi Emperor approached military affairs during peacetime can also be clearly seen from his endorsements on memorials. His comments on a 1300-character palace memorial from the provincial commander-in-chief in Jiangnan, named Shi Yide, allows us to follow the emperor's train of thought. He follows Shi's argument closely, stopping now and again to note his comments in Vermilion

Inc. at the top of the relevant column. Shi began by reporting that he had found serious deficiencies in the military personnel available to him. Officers were old and weak, disciplined with slack, archery poor, and so on. But he was unwilling to send in an impeachment memorial naming a lot of names, lest this lead to blanket dismissals by the Ministry of War and the appointment of new officials who might prove even less suitable than the old ones. To this, the Emperor commented,

In other words, the palace memorial system should not be used for routine reports of this kind. But as the report progressed, we see the Emperor growing increasingly interested and sympathetic. Shi's request for the transfer of able guardsmen from Zili to replace some of the training lieutenants who had no combat experience was capped with the Imperial notation, quote, I have already sent someone to see to it, end quote. At the end of the following section of the memorial, which dealt with patrol boats and river markers, the Emperor wrote, So be it, an endorsement that in his usage seems to have been an implication of excellent or well thought out. Shida's memorial concludes with recommendations on bandit prevention and the locations of garrison forces. The Emperor's final words were,

All the contents of this memorial are to the point, but the serious and protracted decline in military matters is the same in all provinces. The Emperor's final words were, quote, Not causing trouble is a recurrent theme throughout the confidential endorsements by the Kangxi Emperor. It was one of his major guidelines across his administration. The bondservant, Cao Yin, seeking to start a major investigation of corruption within the imperial salt monopoly, the Kangxi Emperor. It was one of his major guidelines across his administration. The bondservant, Cao Yin, seeking to start a major investigation of corruption within the imperial salt monopoly, was told by the emperor that, quote, causing trouble is not as good as preventing trouble, end quote. Zhang Buxing, as governor of Jiangsu,

was exhorted to watch out for those who spread rumors and start trouble. Lang Tingzhi, governor of Jiangxi, was given a brief lecture on the subject. Quote, To be a good official, you need do no more than this. Be sincere in your heart and sincere in your work. And do not cause too much trouble. End quote.

The Manchu governor-general of Liangchang, Assan, was told by the emperor in 1704 that though previous governor-generals had been no better than Assan, at least they, unlike Assan, at least they, unlike Assan, had, quote, stayed quiet and not stirred up trouble, end quote. All these imperial comments fit in well with the assessment that the Kangxi Emperor's principal demand was for harmony, or he. His policies were governed by caution, tolerance of moderate dissent, and reliance on moral

suasion rather than force. In practical ways, this meant that the Kangxi Emperor, despite his energy in military and intellectual matters, tended to support the status quo in provincial administration. More than that, he yearned for continuity. We see this particularly in the case of his senior provincial generals. Shi Yida owed his career to the fact that the Kangxi Emperor had admired his father, General Shi Debin. While on a campaign in western China, the Emperor promoted Shi Yide from the ranks in memory of his father's ability.

Twelve years after his first promotion, Shi Yide was commander-in-chief in Jiangnan, one of the most prestigious military posts in all of China. The same pattern occurred with Shi Lang's son, Shi Shih-Pao, and many others. Once he found a military man who was good at his job, the Kangxi Emperor did not like to transfer him. Shida held the post in Jiangnan for five years. Two of his predecessors in the same post in Kangxi's reign held the post respectively for 13 and for 18 years. The same pattern held true for the Manchu and Jinxia generals-in-chief in Jiangnan at this time. One was in office for 20 years, and six held their posts for over a decade. Two of these six had

already served as military commanders at a lower level in the same province for long periods before their final promotion. The surviving palace memorials from the Kangxi reign enable us to view aspects of the bureaucratic process that are usually concealed by traditional Jinxia historiography. How an official worked his way into a new post and changed his attitudes to adapt to local conditions, and how the emperor tracked his official's progress. Wang Dujiao in Zhejiang learned how to distinguish different types of pirates, and to assess who would benefit from which kind of tax reduction. Langtingzhe in Jiangxi charted monthly fluctuations in the price of rice,

the volume sold, and the patterns of interprovincial shipments. He began to write his own memorials, rather than to entrust the task to a scribe, after the emperor told him, quote, Hereafter, write out your palace memorials in your own hand. It's a calligraphy is poor, it does not matter, end quote. Langtingzhe replied in appropriately wobbly calligraphy that, quote, I only had someone write out my memorials for me because I feared my bad writing might seem disrespectful. The Kangxi Emperor made some appointments as tests. When he appointed Cheng Yuanlong as the Guangxi governor, he said, You have served many years in Hanlin. Now I am going to specially try you out in the frontier post,

to see what you were like doing at the job. It also seems that he did not consider the experiment particularly successful. After Chen's recall, he reverted to the practice of appointing Han Jun Bannerman as governors in Guangxi. The Guangxi Emperor was aware of the differences and tensions that existed between Manchu and Jinxia officials. Han Jun Bannerman, descended in the main from Northeasterners who had submitted to the Qing cause before or just after 1644, were in an intermediate position, and the emperor drew many of his governors general and provincial governors from the Hanjun banners. Bondservants descended from those enslaved or incorporated into Manchu banners

before 1644 were another such intermediate group, often bilingual and with both Manchu and Jin before 1644 or another such intermediate group, often bilingual and with both Manchu and Jinsha antecedents. But the number of appointable officials from these groups was limited. In his public edicts, the emperor referred to maintaining a balance among Manchu and Jinsha officials. Commenting on the struggle that flared up in 1712 between the Jinsha governor of Jiangsu, Zhang Boxing, and his superior, the Manchu governor-general of Liangqiang, Ga Li, in which the two traded bitter charges of incompetence, cruelty, and

corruption, the Kangxi emperor declared, quote, Manchus and Jin Shi are all my officials. I look on them alike and make no distinctions. Manchu officials shall not say I am partial to the Jin Shi, end quote. But neither should the Jin Shi feel that the emperor would shelter the Manchus only. The Kangxi emperor's confidential rescript in Manchu, however, tell a more complicated story, as can be seen in comments that he appended to a memorial by Manchu Governor-General Assan in 1704. Assan had risen from lowly beginnings to become the powerful Governor-General of Liangcheng in the early 1700s. His Manchu language memorials to the emperor are punctuated throughout by the emperor's

constant interlinear vermilion comments, some arguing about local officials' comparative abilities or honesty while commenting on the various levels of extra fees that should be tolerated among senior administrators, others teasing or scolding us on for his muddle over financial details. But, however apparently niggling or hostile the emperor's comments, it is clear that he was fond of Assan, and ultimately trusted him. As the Kangxi emperor wrote in a long comment to Assan after the governor-general expressed gratitude for not being dismissed, quote, When we are considering the characteristics of particular officials, we should be looking at their actions, not at their words.

If what they say is not fully realized, then the actions will not accord to the role. Our Manchu elders used to say, when words are pedantic, they won't accord with reality. Your words are crude, but they really echo my feelings. We who bear the name of Manchus should be true to the ways of the Manchus. If we just clumsily follow the methods of the Hanran, then we will be laughed at and reviled by them, and we'll have to take the consequences. As a governor-general, you are of average ability.

There is nothing particularly special about you. Manchu generals and their troops work as one. You should be compassionate and frugal. When you were in the Manchu military forces, you were both compassionate and frugal, so I never intervened. Now you are old and approaching death. When it comes time for you to leave your post, if not a single Manchu comes to say goodbye to you, will there be any trace of your memory to be recorded? As Confucius said,

even if one has all the wondrous abilities of the Duke of Zhou, but is miserly and arrogant, the rest would not redress the imbalance. Such imperial interventions could be sharp, but with regard to many aspects of the lucrative benefits of holding high office, the emperor followed a laissez-faire policy. The profits were enormous, and the emperor's exhortations regarding frugality must be seen as largely rhetorical, even if he did choose to appear at times at state functions with patches rather ostentatiously showing on his imperial robes. The lucrative salt monopoly and trade in ginseng were kept as imperial monopolies. Receipts from the sale of the rights to distribute and manufacture salt

and the large revenues derived from the major harbor and transit tolls on foreign and domestic trade mainly passed through the hands of ginsha or manchu bondservants, supervised by the imperial household department, and they remitted all surplus directly to it. Bondservants also managed the major imperial textile manufactories in Suzhou, Nanjing, and they remitted all surplus directly to it. Bond servants also managed the major imperial textile manufactories in Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou, and the establishments in these three cities were used as the traveling palaces, or xinggong, where the emperor could stay during the six southern tours that he took between 1684 and 1707. Other bond servants and members of the

imperial household department directed the huge porcelain industry at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi. Bond servants were also in charge of procuring exotic foreign products for the emperor's amusement and edification, and of keeping a close eye on the activities of the small but flourishing Jinsha merchant community based at Nagasaki in Japan. The mixture of conventional and irregular systems brought in revenue to meet the expenses of the imperial household. In the early 18th century, the Kangxi Emperor decided to make a dramatic gesture that would proclaim the prosperity of his realm. His 1712 decision to freeze the Ding tax at 1711 levels was one of the most unfortunate economic and political acts of the first century of Qing rule. The Ding was a unit of taxation that ostensibly correlated directly with one adult taxable male, and indirectly with his associated household,

females, children, and other adult males, including servants. Because local labor tax service quotas were denominated in Ding units and set by higher governmental levels, there was reluctance on the part of the local officials to report any population increases. By freezing the quotas of ding imposed on local government units, the Kangxi Emperor encouraged all local agencies, from householders through Baozhao headsmen and up to the magistrate staffs, to report actual population figures. Though the effect on the registers was not initially dramatic, at least according to the figures from the Veritable Records annual summaries,

by the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns, the population figure in the four categories of adult and minor males and females began to reflect the climb in the population past 300 million. On the negative side, however, veneration of the Kangxi Emperor in those years meant that reversing his decision was politically unthinkable. The Qing bureaucracy was stuck with assessments that could not take account of growth, internal migration, or shifts in agricultural practice. In the context of shrinking revenues on a per capita basis, the Ministry of Revenue and the Imperial Household Department became proportionally more reliant on other, often irregular, sources. In the decade before his death, the Kangxi Emperor fretted about his historical image. He pleaded with his own ministers for sympathy, or else ranted at them for their lack of it. He spoke publicly of the physical ailments that afflicted him,

lameness in the legs, dizziness, and even the loss of memory that was beginning to cloud his judgment. Uncertainty over the succession continued until the moment of the Kangxi Emperor's death. This was the last echo in the Qing of the competition for succession among the brothers known as Tenestri, so prominent earlier in Mongol and Manchu history. Of the Kangxi Emperor's various administrative initiatives and innovations, only the palace memorial system was successfully developed. Under the Yongzheng Emperor, it provided a new flow of information to the center of government and, brought under effective imperial supervision, was incorporated into the military command apparatus and contributed to the founding of the Grand Council. The Kangxi Emperor was aware of his role as leader of the Han Jinshi

and made an effort to support scholarly enterprises. His initial informal education in Jinshi language was received from the eunuchs and serving women, but he chose to undergo rigorous training as he began to rule. The 16 moral maxims that were issued in 1670 in the young emperor's name may have been drafted for him by Jinxia advisors, but the meticulous reports of Ernest Sessions with a series of classical scholars as they worked together, line by line, through each of the major Confucian classics should not be taken as hyperbole or hypocrisy. Rather, they were part of the same policy that led to his convening of the special Bolshui Hongzhu Examination of 1679, the balancing of provincial and metropolitan appointments between Manchus and Jinshi,

and the planning of the six southern tours to those areas of the Yangtze Delta that had been most famous for resistance in the 1640s. The imperially sponsored scholarship during the Kangxi reign was of high quality. Though the compilation of the Ming history was marked by partisan friction and numerous delays, many other projects moved smoothly. The thesaurus arranged by rhymes, entitled the Beiwan Yunfu, and the immense marshalling of material for the Complete Tang Poems, were coordinated by Jinshi scholars and printed with the financial and administrative resources of the textile commissioner of Nanjing, the bondservant Cao Yin. Work on the encyclopedic collection of writing of the past arranged by topic, known as the Gunjin Tushu Zhicheng, swung between imperial sponsorship and supervision by wrangling editorial directors,

but when it was completed, it was one of the great monuments of Jinshi scholarship. The progress and level of skill employed by such projects as a bilingual Jinshi Manchu edition of the classics, and a Manchu translation of the celebrated late Ming picaresque Buddhist novel Xi Yu Zhi, or The Journey to the West, were carefully watched by the emperor. Other imperially sponsored compilations of the fields of mathematics, astronomy, history, and geography, along with the famous dictionary, the Kangxi Zijian, enhanced the scholarly aura of the reign overall. The projects gave lucrative employment, or at least short-term commissions, to numerous scholars. Nor was the emperor the only patron of scholarship. His own elder half-brother, Fu Quan, built a center

for scholars in his Beijing garden, the Mugeng Yuan. The emperor's third son, Yinzi, supported scholars like Cheng Menglei in assembling the sources for the Gujin Tu Xu Zhi Cheng. In addition, some of the Kangxi emperor's more favored officials, men as disparate in career and background as Xu Qian Shui and Cao Yun, supported numerous scholars in Jiangnan. Painters likewise received imperial support. The prestige of academic court painters had waned in the late Ming, but revived in the Kangxi era with the productions of Zhang Zhao, Qiang Qingshi, Zhao Bingzhen, and Leng Mei.

These and other painters were assigned to the Southern Study or the Hanlin Academy, and some learned techniques from European artists such as Garherardini and the young Castiglione, who were skilled in chiaroscuro and perspective. Earlier styles of landscape paintings were revived to impressive levels by the works of Wang Hui and the other Four Wangs. Manchu painters such as Poartu had also acquired enough skill to make contributions to this genre. The tours and festivities in the Kangxi Emperor's later years were celebrated in a series of enormous and beautifully executed scrolls, the composition of which was directed by famous artists such as the Wanshou Shengtian by Wang Yuanchi, produced for the Emperor's 60th

birthday, or the Nanshun Shengtian, directed by Wang Hui, which commemorated his southern tours. The production of these works in their varied forms as painted scrolls, black and white copies, and woodblock prints gave employment to countless skilled painters and artisans. The high quality of these productions contrasts sharply with the weak woodblock prints made in the Qianlong reign to record similar moments of glory in the mid-18th century. Many scholars, such as Xiang Zili, Zhang Buxing, and Li Guangji, held senior appointments within the bureaucracy.

Partly under their influence, the Kangxi Emperor endorsed the Zhu Xi interpretations of the classics and sponsored the compilation of new editions of the works of Zhu Xi and other Song thinkers identified with the learning of the Wei, or Daoshui. In some of his private comments, especially those in Manchu, the emperor sometimes expressed irritation or sarcasm about Confucian moral philosophy. Commenting to a Manchu governor-general about the righteous Confucian scholar Zhang Buxing,

who constantly emphasized Li, principles, and Xing, human nature, the emperor noted that Zhang Buxing's political actions showed no clear understanding of either principles or human nature. But the emperor rarely took harsh action against a distinguished scholar on the grounds of his writing. The most famous exception was Dai Ming Shi, who had ranked second in the Jinxia Examination of 1709. Dai's fatal mistake was to have publicly expressed his interests in learning more about the southern Ming regimes of the post-1644 era, and was said to have used Ming reign names for the post-1644 period. As a result, he was executed in 1713.

But this exception, grim though it was, should not be allowed too great of a weight in our overall assessment of the politics of the Kangxi reign. As a ruler, overall, the Kangxi emperor was in the main imaginative and flexible, open to new ideas, and constantly seeking out men of talent from a wide range of backgrounds to help him with the task of ruling. The emperors of China have often been viewed as, and no doubt often were, men who cut themselves off from their subjects, extracting the wealth of the country and giving back little in return. The Kangxi Emperor, however, thought to break out of such a restrictive pattern, and to a perhaps surprising extent, he succeeded. That is where we will conclude our examination of the Kangxi Emperor's reign and life today. Next time, we will be picking up with his successor and son, who will be known as the Yongzheng Emperor.

He's a very fun emperor, not because he reigned for a particularly long time or did anything particularly great, but because he very, very famously really enjoyed cosplay. I mean, really liked it. So we will get into all that next time. And as always, thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when

the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.