Power for a price: Office purchase, elite families, and status maintenance in Qing China

This dissertation revises prevalent conceptions of social hierarchy and political access in Qing China (1644-1911) through an analysis of the officially sanctioned office purchase (Ch. juanna) system that was in effect for most of the Qing dynasty after 1665. Synthesizing evidence from a wide range of materials, including central government policy files, sales data records, and private documents, this work argues that the presence of a significant group of officials who did not hold degrees from the civil service examination system requires historians to revisit long-held assumptions about the nature of political access and elite status in Qing China. Specifically, this dissertation argues that, contrary to assumptions that social mobility was predicated mainly upon scholarly achievement, possession of liquid wealth was a critical prerequisite for attaining as well as maintaining social status and prestige, even for those who succeeded in the examinations.;Office purchase also influenced the Qing bureaucracy and society at large by simultaneously expanding and homogenizing the pool of candidates for official service. The results after surveying personnel files from the central government of over 1,600 officials reveal that upwards of 50% of those sampled in the nineteenth century used office purchase to enter the bureaucracy without direct certification through the civil service examinations, which undermines the conventional supposition that only degree holders could become officials. Also, an analysis of national and regional data on over 10,000 buyers shows that the socioeconomic backgrounds of individuals purchasing offices in the Qing was similar to persons who were likely successful participants in the examinations. Office purchase was therefore a guaranteed means for access to government positions, mitigating previous studies' claims that a family was subject to downward social mobility through failure in examinations. In this context, material wealth was more than simply a resource that facilitated other means and markers. Rather, it was an important tool in itself for status preservation. Although it was widely criticized as an unethical way of bureaucratic recruitment, throughout the Qing office purchase not only increased state revenue but also permitted individuals to parlay their economic assets into instruments of securing political and social status.