Study On The Official School,imperial Examination And Official Advancement Of The Banner People In The Early And Middle Qing Dynasty

The Banner People is a special social group in the Qing Dynasty.(1)The Manchurian ruling group with the system—“the Eight Banners as the foundation of the Qing Dynasty”,after entering the Central Plains and ruling the whole country,was faced with Han group,which are tens of thousands of times more than its own ethnic group.How to maintain the special status and power of the conquering ethnic group and ensure the long-term stability of the state has become an unavoidable important subject.Therefore,in the construction of the national political system,the rulers of the Qing Dynasty adopted the basic policy of “focusing on Manchurian interests”and “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty”,and established a series of far-reaching systems and policies in the tension of interpenetration of the two.Since the first year of Shunzhi(1644),the Qing Court established various kinds of official schools successively,opened courses for the Banner People and selected scholars,and opened up channels for the official advancement of the Banner People in various ways,which were just the measures and products in response to this realistic demand.To a certain extent,it also reflects the evolution of the mutual influence and interpenetration,and its internal “tension” of the policies of “focusing on Manchurian interests” and “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty”.Therefore,this paper focuses on the education,examination and birth of the Banner People in the early and middle Qing Dynasty,and makes a brief interpretation and analysis of this,mainly including the following aspects:Firstly,it is to discuss the formation and evolution of the official education system of the Banner People.The official school for the Banner People,modeled after the Imperial College of the Ming Dynasty,was founded in the period of the Emperor Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty.The official school for the Banner People was specially designed for the children of the Eight Banners to learn Manchu,Mongolian or Chinese,translation,horseback riding,archery and other subjects,and gradually formed a relatively perfect system.In addition to the official school for the Eight Banners and the school of arithmetic attached to the Imperial College,the royal clan school and the imperial school for the descendants of Gioro family attached to the Imperial Clan Court,Jingshan official school and Xian’an Palace official school attached to the Imperial Household Department,and some other official schools with characters,such as Storm Troops and the Old Summer Palace located in the three camps outside Beijing,the official school for the firearm performance outside Beijing,the free school attached to the Ministry of Rites,the official school for the hereditary title,local official schools of the eight banners were also established in each garrison area.Although the establishment of this series of “the official school for the Eight Banners” education system was based on the purpose and need of “focusing on Manchurian interests”,it still had a large number of elements of “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty”.Secondly,it is to discuss the operation of the official school for the Eight Banners and the way-out for students.Focusing on the official school for the Eight Banners of the Imperial College,this paper also investigates the origin of official students,teaching management,curriculum setting and examination,students’ way-out and other issues and their evolution.Although the operation and education of “the official school for the Eight Banners” are often titled as “focusing on Manchurian interests” and emphasize the basic connotation of “mandarin,riding and archery”(1),fundamentally speaking,“being familiar with Manchu and Han and being sufficiently appointed” is the basic mode and educational policy of the talent training in the official school for the Eight Banners.It also reflects the integration and interaction between“focusing on Manchurian interests” and “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty”.Thirdly,it is to discuss the liberal art imperial examination of the Banner People.Through studying the evolution of the imperial examination among the Banner People,especially from“List Division” to “List Integration” between the Banner People and the Han People,and the change of Manchu and Han cultural factors in the translation imperial examinations and the royalty imperial examinations,this paper also examines the ideological changes of the Qing Court in the process of constructing the imperial examination system,the melt of the Boundaries of Manchu and Han,which reflected the interactive inclusion between “focusing on Manchurian interests” and “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty”.Lastly,it is to discuss the official advancement of the Banner People.Based on the study of the channels to be an official among the Banner People,such as by passing the imperial examination or buying office,the paper orders the number of the civil scholars,translation scholars among the Manchu Eight Banners,which obviously discloses the Man-Han distinction in the selection of officials.The rulers of the Qing Dynasty provided Manchurian Banner People with a wide range of ways for their choice of official positions.Even when Manchu and Han were reinstated,Manchu in front,Han in back,Manchu officials had certain advantages over Han officials,which reflects the characteristics of “focusing on Manchurian interests”.However,some “Manchu and Han integration” phenomena and the increase of the imperial examination for the Banner People still show the important influence of “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty” in the construction of Qing Dynasty state system,and in fact reflect the internal trend of “further eliminating the boundaries of Manchu and Han”.In conclusion,by sorting out the three levels and their inner relations among the official education,imperial examination and official advancement,this paper attempts to analyze,in the construction of national political system in the early and middle Qing Dynasty,how the concept of national construction—between “focusing on Manchurian interests” and “following the Confucian culture and the management system of the Ming Dynasty” influences each other and infiltrates “acculturation” process in the dynamic operation of realistic politics.They are the unity of opposites and complement each other,which shows the basic context and trend of the construction and evolution of a unified multi-ethnic country in the Qing Dynasty,and which also reveals why the Qing Dynasty is able to achieve long-term political stability.