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The Internal Organization of Ch'ing Bureaucracy: Legal, Normative, and Communication Aspects

The third generation of scholarly interpretations of China's imperial bureaucracy is now appearing. The first generation, of which Max Weber was but one of many representatives, featured broad comparative conclusions, highlighting either the precocity of this long-evolving merit-based organization or the venality to which it had sunk, in part through an alleged stifling impact on commercial initiative. The second generation, marked by a resurgence of publications during the late 1950s and early 1960s, provided essential details for reinterpreting both ideal and actual patterns and for explaining the bureaucracy's position within some wider environment. Many of the important writings on premodern Chinese social structure belong to this generation of studies, including analyses of extensive social mobility through the examination system and of imperial control achieved in local areas with few personnel. Now the new generation eschews treatment of the environment in which the bureaucracy operated, instead focusing intensively on aspects of the bureaucracy's internal structure. Thomas Metzger's book typifies this new breed in relying heavily on a specific body of primary sources chosen from the wide assortment of Chinese administrative publications, in restricting the time perspective primarily to the first two-thirds of the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911) and in widely employing contemporary social science concepts. Drawing on detailed information concerning the relationship between law and bureaucratic organization, Professor Metzger refutes oversimplified impressions of China's long-standing governmental system that have lingered from the earlier generations of writings.