On The Censorate Of Court Of Censors At Nanjing In Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty is one of the fewest dynasties in Chinese history that had two capitals. In the defunct capital of Nanjing, there kept a set of relatively complete central departments, including some judicial departments. The research on the central departments of Nanjing is always received little attention from scholars for the only reason that they were less important than their counter-parts at Peking. However, the author of this thesis think that there must be some reasonibleness since the central departments of Nanjing in Ming Dynasty had being kept for over 200 years until the Dynasty was ended. Because of this, the author of this thesis take the Censorate of Court of Censors at Nanjing as the object of research, studies its evolution, set of organization and power on the initial stage. May it offer a few somewhat immature remarks to solicit other people's wise and mature opinions.This thesis consists of following five parts.The first part is the Introduction, in which the author gives a brief introduction of the sense of the topic, the purpose of research, the status quo of research and the reference of this thesis.The second part is Chapter One, the author made a general comb of the evolution of the Censorate of Court of Censors at Nanjing, dating from Zhu-yuanzhang period to Zheng-Tong period. Those names , changing from the Censorate set before the Dynasty was established, to the Censorate of Court of Censors, to the Censorate of Court of Censors at Nanjing, indicated the background of the institution's uncommon fate. This part also does elaboration for the writing afterwards.The third part of the thesis is Chapter two. In this part, the author carefully analyses the institution's set of organization by introducing the status, the salary, the conditions of appointment and power of the Senior Officials, Staff Supervisors, Investigation Censors, Novice Collegians of the Imperial Academy and junior clerks.Chapter three, the fourth part of this thesis, is the most important part. It describes the comprehensive powers of the Censorate of Court of Censors at Nanjing on administration, judiciary, military , economics, and ceremony and propriety. These will be a real help for people to understand the institution's role.In the last part of this thesis, the author makes brief summary of the Censorate of Court of Censors at Nanjing, and reveals the author's study direction on this subject in the future.