Studies on Their Role in 19th Century Chinese Society
by Chang Chung-li
University of Washington Press
Seattle, 1955
However one may evaluate the merit or demerit of the Chinese gentry, the fact remains that for centuries Old China was ruled by this elite of educated men. They were the officials who ran the imperial bureaucracy, dominated society, and were also the scholars, philosophers, poets, and painters who carried on China's cultural traditions. This system has greatly impressed the Westerners, like a Voltaire or a Max Weber. How it worked out and how it finally failed to survive is a problem of unparalleled fascination not only to students of modern and ancient China, but to sociologists and political scientists as well.
That's why Mr. Chang's choice of the Chinese gentry as the subject of his studies is most fortunate and highly laudable. Many of his findings are very interesting and may, even if they are to be considered as inconclusive, point to certain directions for further fruitful studies.
Mr. Chang's book consists of four parts. Part One deals with the constitution and character of the gentry. The complex system of recruiting the gentry—by examinations and by purchase—is described in detail and with clarity. Then are the gentry's many privileges minutely reviewed and evaluated. A section on the gentry's exploitation of its privileged position is a great revelation to many (certainly most shocking to the idolaters of the ancient golden age!) and deserves our special attention. Numerous social functions which the gentry performed in their local area are studied with understanding and insight. It has been clearly shown how, in normal times, they cooperated with the government in keeping the wheels of society turning and maintaining the status quo. Sometimes, they criticized or even opposed or blocked governmental actions. But in critical times after the Taiping period, they took over more and more of the governmental functions and could choose whether to support the government or to challenge directly its authority.
Part Two deals with the numerical analysis of the gentry of 19th century China. Anyone who has troubled himself with Chinese historical studies knows well how ancient Chinese were utterly incapable of dealing with numbers. Whenever we encounter numbers n historical descriptions we can be perfectly sure that instantly other diverging figures will be found in other records. Therefore this numerical study is doubly praise-worthy.
No doubt this part has caused its author the greatest effort. A great variety of modern computing techniques—the tendency toward quantification in social sciences being still on the increase-have been brought here to an ingenious application (there are no less than 18 full-page-tables in this part alone). He came to a definite estimation of the size of the gentry in 19th century China and its proportion to the total population, of the change in size from the pre-Taiping to the post-Taiping periods. The principal components of the gentry are also estimated and these figures are certainly useful in assessing the importance of the various groups within the gentry. Besides, the author has called our attention to the important fact how the early Manchu court utilized the purchase system—to create an “irregular" group within the gentry by selling of academic degrees and official titles-in combination with the periodical revision of frequency and quota in the government examination system, as an efficient tool to balance and control the size and composition of the gentry within the empire.
So far as the figures go they are well elaborated and certainly very helpful to our understanding of Old China. But the author seems to exaggerate their implications. He sees in the growth of the irregulars a weakening of the government. "The gentry outgrew the restraint of governmental control and became difficult to manage. The lesser regard for the traditional principles of the system undermined the gentry's loyalty to the government. These changes also affected the gentry's traditional role and standing in society. The changed composition of the gentry affected the quality of gentry leadership. Thus, the change in the size and character of the gentry no: only undermined the government, but contributed to the disintegration of a society which had been dominated by this group." (p. 141).
Here, what the author presented as his conclusions are in fact only hypotheses. Because all the social phenomena which the author pointed out here-supposing they are true—can only be more plausibly explained by, but by no means cogently deducted from these statistical elaborations. An apple less doesn't prove that an apple has been eaten, stolen or stored away.
Part Three, " the examination life of the gentry," describes vividly how a large part of the gentry were constantly occupied in preparing for examinations, some of them for no less than the whole span of their lives. A survey of the content of the examinations and its relation to the selection of officials showed its utter inadequacy to their proclaimed purposes. Then is the so-called "spirit of equality" in the examination system critically scrutinized and the many advantages formally or informally accorded to the sons of the wealthy and influential are relentlessly revealed, and this forces us to bring our otherwise too ideally conceived picture of the system to an important correction. The section on the "corruption in the examination system" is in my opinion a little too severe. Undeniably there were numerous cases of corruption and malpractice. But to present the whole system as a corrupt and cheating affair certainly goes too far. Even if half of the directors-of-studies were corrupt and greedy, at least the other half of them were upright and honest. The many trials and heavy punishments which the author cited as proof for corruption and malpractice spoke at least equally well for the highest importance which the imperial court attached to the keeping of the system as irreproachable as possible. But still the system was destined to a final collapse. And for this, I think, the trend of the time with the impact of the West which made society a changed one was a causal factor the importance of which can never be overestimated.
Part Four is the "quantitative analysis" of the 5473 gentry biographies collected from local gazetteers. The study of their different social functions, of the proportion between the established gentry and the newcomers (social mobility), and of the economic data contained in them is both ingenious and highly instructive. In fact this is the most successful of the four parts and represents a happy illustration of the usefulness of the quantitative method in social researches.
In view of the high merits of the work, some critical remarks may be not out of place. To understand the 19th century gentry completely a certain knowledge of the bureaucratic system—the imperial personnel administration—is indispensable. Indeed, the examination and civil ser. rice system, both ancient institutions, went hand in hand and the one could not be fully understood without the other. Therefore it would seem to me more appropriate if the author had devoted a little more space and detail to this important institution.
The acquisition of the sheng-yuan title is often called "entry into school." But this "schools" is only a literary term. There are no instructional institutions corresponding to it. This discrepancy between name and fact should be brought out more clearly.
The purchase of degree and title or position never involved the actual appointment to a job. An actual job could never be formally purchased. Indeed, the waiting for the appointment to a job was at least as time-consuming and enervating for the gentry as the perpetual preparation for examinations. This, in my opinion, has not been made sufficiently clear by the author.
On page 3 the author translated the words Shih and Shu with "poems and books". This left me a bit breathless. (cf. Tzu-Hai).—HSU DAU-LIN
SIR ANTHONY EDEN
THE CHRONICLES OF A CAREER
By Lewis Broad
The Anchor Press, Ltd., Tiptree, Essex
256 pages, 15s.
In the eyes of the British public, Sir Anthony Eden has been one of the most prominent men during the last twenty-five years. Yet no one but those closest to him really knows him. Surely, the man who was to become their Prime Minister should be better known by the English people.
This was perhaps the reason why Mr. Lewis Broad decided to publish his book on Sir Anthony on the eve of the last British general election, although he had written it some years before. It is quite possible that Mr. Broad had then the invention of acquainting the British people with the character and achievements of their would be Prime Minister. If so, Mr. Broad is to be congratulated on having achieved his aim splendidly, for he did produce a rather complete story of Mr. Eden up to that time. This is a book interesting for the general public, but serious students of contemporary history must not expect too much from it. The author drew his material mainly from daily newspapers, Handsard's Parliamentary Debates, biographies and autobiographies of modern statesmen and other books. A full and real story of Mr. Eden cannot be written on the basis of only those sources. The story will have to remain a little vague until more material, such as official records, state and private papers, become available. Now that Eden is Prime Minister, this book will unquestionably have a good circulation just as its predecessor, Mr. Broad's book on Winston Churchill, had.
Like most biography writers, Mr. Broad starts with the ancestral past and the early school and college days of his hero. But very soon his fuller attention is turned to Eden's political apprenticeship under Baldwin and Austen Chamberlain and his career in the foreign services.
Anthony Robert Eden was born on June 12, 1897, in Windlestone, Durham, a place of great beauty. His ancestors played an eminent part in British history and rendered important services to the country. As Mr. Broad puts it, it is from his ancestors in the Georgian times that Mr. Eden obtained his "skill in the conduct of diplomatic affairs," from "the Governor of Maryland that he inherited "the easy courtesy and the charm that has assisted him in the conduct of negotiation," and from his grandfather and father that he acquired his "artistic interests and his sensitiveness."
His father was a water colour painter, with an artist's appreciation of beauty. But he was over-sensitive, easily excitable, intolerant of views not his own and temperamental to his children. Why Eden has inherited so much nice points from his more remote ancestors and so little from his father, the author has not bothered himself to tell us. Scarcely anything is said of his mother in this book, except that she was "a woman whose beauty threw her husband into ecstasies of delight."
Eden's education began with the tuition by his German governess, who possessed the gift of teaching languages. It was from her that he acquired an early command of French and German. His schooling followed strictly the family tradition—first Eton and then Oxford. But before going to Oxford, he saw action in the First World War.
Eden neither won distinction at school nor stood out prominent in college. Curiously enough, he never took part in debate in the Oxford Union. But it was at Oxford that he chose diplomacy as his lifelong career. So he learned Persian and Arabic. In those days, there was no one in Oxford who could teach him either of the two languages. He had a tutor of theology as his supervisor. Even his supervisor, Dr. A. E. J. Rawlinson, had to say: "I really knew very little of him and able to do very little for him." Yet in his final examination, he won a first class honour in Persian and Arabic. In his diplomatic negotiations with Arabian and Persian diplomats later in life, he was able to use their languages fluently.
He was barely twenty-six when he was first elected to Parliament from Warwick and Leamington. In the middle of his campaign he married Beatrice Beckett, daughter of a banker, whom he divorced in 1950. His second wife is a niece of Churchill's, twenty-three years younger than he.
Eden is not quite fifty-nine years of age, but he has spent most of his last twenty years in one responsible office after another. He has been Lord Privy Seal, Minister for League of Nations Affairs, Dominion Secretary, War Secretary, Foreign Secretary and now Prime Minister. Since he joined Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, Eden has devoted most of his time to foreign affairs. He did it nicely. He was right when he voiced his opinion that Britain should protect herself from air attack that Britain should fight for the system of collective security, that Munich was one step towards war and not towards peace, and that the future of our civilization called for a permanent understanding among all nations. Of 256 pages of Mr. Broad's book, 236 are devoted to a discussion of this part of the Eden story. The diplomatic episodes and complications in the war and post-war periods are carefully studied, although many important events concerning the Far East have been omitted.
According to Mr. Broad, Eden is a man of firmness, in spite of his easy manners. It is perhaps better to quote the author in this connection: "Eden has a tenacity where his principles are involved, and he has moral courage. He can say 'no' not merely to an opponent, but to a friend." One is tempted to ask: Why did he resign from Neville Chamberlain's government instead of fighting it out for his principles, when he was so sure that appeasement of the aggressors would lead nowhere?
The open rift between Eden and Chamberlain was one over a fairly simple issue: Should Britain hold immediate talks with Mussolini, or should she defer them until the Italians proved their better intentions by deeds?
At that time Eden's reputation was "of the highest," and he had many supporters among the younger members of the Conservative Party. If he chose to fight for his principles, he could have made a good case and rallied his supporters around him. But he did not take this course. Mr. Broad ascribes his attitude to loyalty to his leader and party. One wonders if it is to the nation or to one's leader that one should be loyal first. Eden's attitude is all the more difficult to understand when he was convinced that Chamberlain's policy would be disastrous to the nation. Had Eden acted differently, perhaps Hitler and Mussolini would have paused and thought twice before they embarked upon further aggression. Then perhaps the course of history would have been different.
Another baffling thing is this. As stated by Mr. Broad in this book, Eden did not mind being a Municher during the negotiations over Indo-China, simply because he wanted to be a channel between the United States and the Chinese Communists.
Let Sir Anthony stick to his old principle that appeasement leads nowhere. Then he would be really serving the cause of world peace.—T. L. CHAO