Ming And Qing The Songjiang Literati And Local Society,

This is a study of the relationship between the literati and the local society in the region of Songjiang in the late Ming and early Qing period which witnessed changes in society. Methodically, cases par excellence and quintessential activities of the local society are culled for the purpose of examining the literati and the local society.Chapter I deals with the conspicuous changes in the local society since the middle period of the Ming dynasty? the rise of cities and towns, the prosperity of economy, the increasing lavishness of lifestyle, the aggrandizement of the social fluidity, and the augmentation of the influence the literati class.The topic of Chapter II is on the literati and the Understanding Relations Hall. The school education was requisite to partaking in the imperial examination in the Ming dynasty that the local school was increasingly the literati's interest. The literati found a space of the cult of their ideal in the Understanding Relations Hall, where they would get a chance to appeal to magistrates and imperial educational commissioners who incensed just mere on the first and fifteenth days of every lunar month. In the mid and late Ming, on account of exacerbating difficulties, literati, preferably converting to local concerns from the ambition of running the state and ecumenically ordering, influenced local administrative affairs by means of the power of co-operating schools in time. Consequently, the Understanding Relations Hall came to become a public space for literati to discuss politics. The extremest case was the local literati movement, in which literati gathered in the Understanding Relations Hall and advocated their cause, backed by schools. Early in the Ching dynasty, magistrates also often consciously called in literati in the same hall to discuss local affairs, but the extreme case of literati movement as in the late Ming never recurred and the school was rather a site for education.Chapter III discusses literati and the nongovernmental association of local literati, Ji She, the cadre of which consisted of the literati of Songjiang prefecture. Ji She built its social network through literary and publishing activities and made its members have some connection with notables, magistrates, and even ministers. Being most active on a local level, members of Ji She cherished an evident sense of managing society, which was revealingly configured in their commenting on social problems. At the Ming-Qing turn, members of Ji She participated in the movement for restoring the Ming dynasty. In the beginning of the Qing dynasty, of the members of Ji She some came into reclusion, but others filled imperial offices, but they and their descendants still continued the cause of the association, with elites being the most active personae in the local society. Only until the reign of Kangxi when associations were repressed, Ji She did not disintegrate.In Chapter IV I dwell on the literati and the local social guarantee. In the mid and late Ming, in the wake of the development of cities and towns, the local social strength was on the rise and undertook local constructive responsibilities. While the central government was impotent to support local administration late in the Ming period, literati zealously devoted themselves to meeting local emergencies and carrying on social guarantee. That the construction of seawalls was more depended upon the local elite class reveals local manipulativeness. Nevertheless, the same construction shifted more at the disposition of the central government in the early...