The Chuangs and the Ming-Ch'Ing Transition

The fall of the Ming dynasty to Manchu barbarians was a bitter experience for Lower Yangtze gentry, although the Manchu triumph, if anything, only enhanced what we are calling "gentry society." Once the winds of dynastic change had blown through, the demise of organizations centering on the Tung-lin and Fu She movements left lineage organizations intact as the major social mechanisms of local control. Local elites in T'ung-ch'eng, An-hui, for example, easily reestablished themselves during the Ch'ing dynasty. In fact, the dislocations wrought by the change of dynasties probably strengthened lineage organization and structure there.

Many of the large corporate lineages in eighteenth-century Kuang-tung Province came into existence only after the dislocations of the mid-seventeenth century. Ruble S. Watson has traced the elaborate "High Ch'ing" lineage organization to the era of prosperity that followed on the heels of the social turmoil of the seventeenth century. The enhanced local power of the Ch'ing elite, organized through higher-order

[14] P'i-ling Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (1935), 12A.2a-4b. See also Wang Hsi-hsun's biography for Chuang Shu-tsu in Ch'ieh-chu-an wen-chi, p. 221, which links T'ing-ch'en's opposition to Wei Chung-hsien to Chuang Ts'un-yü's opposition to Ho-shen. Wang also notes that for two generations after T'ing-ch'en, his descendents did not serve the Ch'ing dynasty. On Wei and the shrines see Ulrich Mammitzsch, "Wei Chung-hsien," p. 250.

lineages, dates from, or was substantially expanded in, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries..^[15]

The Chuang lineage as a whole showed relatively little effect from the wars and economic dislocation brought on by the fall of the south in the 1640s, when invading Manchu armies, whose ranks were swollen with Chinese mercenaries, ended the Ming dynasty. As we have seen, some Chuangs retired to private life out of loyalty to the fallen Ming house. Despite this, the Chuangs (particularly Chuang Ch'i-yuan's line [see fig. 6]) went on in the new dynasty much as they had in the old. How could the Chuangs in Ch'ang-chou have survived relatively intact during the Ming-Ch'ing transition? As in T'ung-ch'eng, An-hui, the mid-seventeenth-century tax rebellions that threatened the elite's financial privileges in Ch'ang-chou forced lineage leaders to make important strategic decisions. To ensure local order and to reestablish their local preeminence, the elite had to accede to the new central power.

Tax reform programs associated with the Single-Whip policy (discussed in chapter 1 as part of the legacy of late Ming reformism) became state policy during the early Ch'ing. Although most of the elite opposed these reform programs during the late Ming, Ch'ang-chou Prefecture, particularly Wu-chin County, had conducted some of the most progressive experiments with tax reforms. As we have seen, the power of the Tung-lin partisans in their home counties meant that in Ch'ang-chou there was a more broadly based recognition among elites that tax reform was necessary.

It is ironic that reform policies advocated in the late Ming by the Tung-lin partisans, among others, were enacted in local society by the Ch'ing dynasty. According to Kawakatsu Mamoru, the Manchus needed to stabilize grain transport to the north, increase tax resources, and come to terms with local gentry influence in order to consolidate conquered territories. The new dynasty therefore undertook various measures, including efforts to equalize land and labor taxes. In addition, in 1657 the regulations for tax exemption were changed abruptly in an effort to curb the excessive tax privileges of the gentry. This change was given political teeth in the well-publicized legal arraignments of selected Yangtze Delta gentry in 1661-62 for back taxes owed

[15] For discussion of the fall of the south, see Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists . On the fall of Chiang-yin see Wakeman, "Localism and Loyalism." See also Struve, Southern Ming , pp. 1-14, 167-95; Ruble S. Watson, Inequality , pp. 6, 14, 22-24, 34-35, 174; and Beattie, Land and Lineage, pp. 44-48, 129, 267. Cf. Ray Huang, Taxation , pp. 147, 149; and Twitchett, "Fan Clan's Charitable Estate," pp. 128-29.

the state. The tax cases centered on the three prefectures of Su-chou, Sung-chiang, and Ch'ang-chou.

According to Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr., a compromise was reached between the Chinese landowning elite and the Manchu throne whereby gentry tax exemptions were restricted and Manchu military prerogatives were limited in favor of civilian rule. Reforms that a native Chinese dynasty could not push through because of local opposition were enacted by a conquering foreign dynasty. Problems pertaining to rural society were ameliorated through the force of arms..^[16]

In its efforts to carry out tax reform, the Ch'ing state placed reform-minded lineages in a better position vis-à-vis their more conservative competitors to maneuver for local power and position. Lineages, for example, continued to play an important role in tax collection under Manchu rule, and the court relied on local gentry in many cases to effect the "equal service for equal fields" reforms below the county level. In return for such local support, the K'ang-hsi Emperor (r. 1661-1722) reaffirmed imperial support for lineage organizations and for the special tax status for charitable corporate estates.

It was no accident, then, that in Ch'ang-chou Prefecture the Chuang and Liu lineages became increasingly prominent in both local society and national affairs under the new dynasty. They represented local higher-order lineages that quickly renounced Ming loyalism in favor of recognizing and thereby exploiting the new social and political realities in place by the 1660s. Of course, an officially patronized elite family gained prestige within a kinship group over lower levels in its own network. In the process, kinship solidarity mitigated the taxing power of the state and helped keep landholding profitable. At the same time, traditional gentry prerogatives in local society were maintained in modified form..^[17]

After the Ming debacle lineage members had to track down the lineage's scattered members and to recompile genealogies. Land left vacant had to be recovered and placed under new, more reliable management. By 1651 the Chuangs had completed the revision of their genealogy, and thereafter the most successful segments of the lineage continued their remarkable rise to local and national preeminence. The

[16] Mori, "The Gentry," pp. 52-53; Kessler, K'ang-hsi , pp. 33-39; and Wakeman, "Seventeenth-Century Crisis," p. 16. See also Kawakatsu, Chugoku^[*] hoken^[*] kokka , pp. 576-77; Beattie, "Alternative to Resistance," p. 263; and Meng, Ming-Ch'ing-shih lun-chu chi-k'an , pp. 434-52.

[17] Hsieh, Ming-mo Ch'ing-ch'u te hsueh-feng , pp. 79-80, discusses the modus vivendi reached between Manchu conquerors and Chinese landowners.

Chuangs soon became an elite lineage that fully accepted and thrived under the alien central government in Peking.

Two lines within the second branch, which emanated from Chuang T'ing-ch'en and Chuang Ch'i-yuan respectively (both became chin-shih in 1610) became so prominent during Ch'ing times that they can only be described as a literati factory for producing chin-shih degree-holders (see fig. 6). Chuang Ch'i-yuan's line produced nineteen chin-shih in seven generations, including three of his four sons. Nearly as productive was Chuang T'ing-ch'en's line, which produced Chuang Ts'un-yü in its eighth generation (counting from Chuang Hsiu-chiu)..^[18]

Charitable estates remained in a privileged tax position after the tax cases of 1661-62. Lineage trusts helped keep scattered properties under unified control and protected those who shared in the trust from the inequities of the tax system. Such arrangements lasted into the middle of the eighteenth century, when abuse of lineage tax privileges again became a cause for concern. In 1756, for example, Chuang Yu-kung— then governor of Chiang-su Province in Su-chou—memorialized the throne concerning the sale of charitable estates by unscrupulous descendents. What disturbed Chuang Yu-kung was that the ideal of charitable land, which the state wholly supported, was being compromised. Chuang urged the Ch'ien-lung Emperor to harshly punish those who would manipulate lineage trusts for their private profit..^[19]

Chuang Yu-kung, although not in the direct lines of descent of the four branches of the Ch'ang-chou Chuang lineage, represented a Chuang constituency in Kuang-chou that developed clan (that is, artificial kinship ties) relations with their Ch'ang-chou namesakes in the early seventeenth century. The Kuang-chou group traced its roots from southeast China (Fu-chien and Kuang-tung) back to Ch'ang-chou. By the 1750s Chuang Yu-kung and Chuang Ts'un-yü, representing their respective lineages, had reached the highest echelons of political power in the state. While Yu-kung served in Su-chou as governor (his jurisdiction included Ch'ang-chou Prefecture), Ts'un-yü in 1756 was academician of the Grand Secretariat (nei-ko hsueh-shih ) in the inner court. The Chuangs' Ch'ang-chou genealogy was then undergoing revision for its third edition, and Chuang Ts'un-yü prevailed upon Chuang Yu-kung as a Kuang-chou namesake to contribute a preface for it.

[18] Chu-chi Chuang-shih tsung-p'u (1883), 8.9b-10b, 8.14b-16a, 8.20b-21a.

[19] Chuang Yu-kung's memorial appears in Huang-Ch'ing ming-ch'en tsou-i, 50.18a-21a.

Published in 1761, Yu-kung's preface appealed to kinship solidarity as the basis for social order. When seen in the context of the sale of corporate land by profit-seeking opportunists, Yu-kung's preface underscores the importance of kinship ideals to the Chuangs, as public officials and lineage members. The betrayal of such ideals, said Yu-kung, warranted harsh punishment..^[20]

The emperor eventually responded to the growing exploitation of kinship privileges. In a 1764 edict, for example, he decreed that only those lineage properties with legitimate ritual and relief functions could be incorporated as trusts and receive special tax status. Efforts to close the tax loophole did not challenge the belief that charitable estates, when properly organized for the sake of kin, provided legitimate protection from the tax system. The emperor noted:

In order to give importance to kinship groups and to cultivate affectionate feelings among their members, people established ancestral halls to perform annual sacrificial rites. If indeed these halls are located in native villages or cities inhabited by kinsmen, all of whom are blood relatives of the same lineages, [these halls] are not only permitted by law but are encouraged as constituting a good custom..^[21]

The steady rise to prominence of the Chuang lineage in Ch'ang-chou provides a window on the long-term social and economic changes we have presented. Through farsighted lineage strategies, gentry interests dealt successfully both with the crises in late Ming rural society in the Yangtze Delta and with the Manchu triumph in south China in the mid-seventeenth century. The success of the Chuang lineage in surviving the Ming-Ch'ing transition and in increasing its prominence both in Ch'ang-chou and in Peking's elite bureaucratic circles during the Ch'ing dynasty suggests that kinship strategies during the seventeenth century played a significant role in defending elite interests in local society.