China and Inner Asia

Organized Panel Session

State Capacity and the Management of Mobility in Early Modern China

During the late imperial period, the Chinese state expanded its efforts to control flows of strategic “resources” (both tangible and intangible) but was constrained by the limitations of premodern technology, bureaucratic precedents and practices, fiscal resources, and ideological principles. Centering on the early modern state's approaches to the management of objects, information, and people, this panel explores how the court mobilized multiple means to achieve its objectives while dealing with various constraints.

Chelsea Wang's analysis of memorial delivery illustrates the basic problems of scale and mobility that came with the reality of governing a large territory. The remaining papers each address one aspect of how the early modern state dealt with this problem of scale through some form of delegation, whether to officials, merchants, or local organizations. Michael Chang delineates the patrimonial network that underlay the imperial control of commercial revenues. Meng Zhang examines the state’s increasing reliance on market-based purchases to obtain imperial timber. Turning to the cultural sphere, Amy Gordanier reveals the court’s efforts to control performers and playwrights through the Suzhou theatre guild. In each case, the state faced the classical principal-agent problem that derived from a conflict of interests between the state and its various delegates. The dynamic processes of coercion, negotiation, and compromise as elucidated in these studies illuminate the court’s capacities as well as constraints in managing the mobility of people, goods, funds, and information.

Organizer(s)

• MZ

  Meng Zhang

  Loyola Marymount University

Chair(s)

• LW

  Lan Wu

  Mount Holyoke College

Paper Presenter(s)

• MZ

  Meng Zhang

  Loyola Marymount University
• CW

  Chelsea Wang

  Claremont McKenna College
• MC

  Michael Chang

  George Mason University
• AG

  Amy Gordanier

  University of California, Los Angeles

Papers:

• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Obtaining Timber for the Court: Tribute, Market, and Frontier
• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Ming vs. Qing: Which State Communicated Faster, and Why?
• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Patrimonialism in Practice: Hešen’s Rise and Historical Role as an Imperial Intendant of the Privy Purse and the Public Fisc
• 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM

  Stage Management: Investigating the Symbiosis between the Suzhou Theater Guild and the Mid-Qing State