A Study Of Official Admonitions In The Late Qing Dynasty From The Perspective Of History Of Thought

Generally speaking,the late Qing period refers to the period from 1840 to 1911,beginning with the Opium War and ending with the fall of the Qing Dynasty.During this period,the Qing government steadily retreated in Western military aggression and faced a serious crisis.At the same time,Western culture,which was hardly known to Qing politicians,is also being introduced into China at an unprecedented speed.Under the combined effect of many factors,autocratic monarchy that has lasted for more than two thousand years has gradually collapsed.In this context,the official admonition writings mainly written by officials and circulating in the official community are also undergoing the final stage of development.With the closer exchanges between Chinese culture and Western culture,the official admonition text contains new ideas and new content that are different from any previous period.It not only reflects the tendency to be practical,but also has signs of being infected by officialdom’s corruption,and it is also affected by the impact of Western culture.The research of these contents is conducive to observe the special effects after the collision of traditional Chinese politics and law with Western thoughts.This article combs the origin and development of official admonition books.It is found that the official admonition books of the late Qing Dynasty have certain similarities with the previous official admonition books in terms of form,content and ideological connotation.That is,according to the different forms,the books on official admonitions in the late Qing Dynasty can also be divided into three main categories: "moral admonitions","political experience",and "selected editions of public slips".On this basis,this article focuses on "The Collection of Official Proverbs",selects representative works of the late Qing Dynasty,and introduces the author’s life experience,existing editions and the content structure of the book according to the classification method mentioned above.Through the above-mentioned efforts,we can see the characteristics of the times and ideological connotations embodied in the official admonition books of the late Qing Dynasty,including the author’s own political experience,the author’s understanding of the professional norms of officials,and his governance principles and specific measures.This article will explore the response and participation degree of officials in the late Qing Dynasty to the changes of the times from the perspective of intellectual history.This article believes that the ideological connotation of the official admonition books of the late Qing Dynasty is mainly reflected in the following three levels: the thought of "emphasizing practice" generally contained in the official admonition books;the influence of officialdom habits;with the invasion of the Western powers,several important social issues that emerged in the late Qing Dynasty and the official response recorded in the official admonition books.In addition,after some knowledgeable officials in the late Qing Dynasty came into contact with Western knowledge,they also formed some modern concepts and ideas.This content is also within the scope of this article.