Hydraulic Evolution and Dynastic Decline: The Yellow River Conservancy, 1796-1855

HYDRAULIC EVOLUTION AND DYNASTIC DECLINE: THE YELLOW RIVER CONSERVANCY, 1796-1855* Randall A. Dodgen Control of the Yellow River was traditionally seen as a barometer of the vitality of Chinese dynastic rule. This view continues to inform recent assessments of the late Qing (1644-1911) dynasty which hold that the river's change of course in 1855 was the culmination of a period of decay in the Yellow River Conservancy that parallelled the overall decline of the Qing (1644-1911) state.1 In particular the Daoguang (1821-50) reign—which encompassed the Opium War (1839-42) and set the stage for the Taiping Rebellion (185164 )—has been described as a period which saw the Qing respond to fiscal and administrative disarray with the bureaucratic and imperial ineffectuality that are the hallmarks of dynastic decline.2 The notion that the Daoguang reign was a period of decline in river management seems to be confirmed by a series of floods that took place along the Yellow River in 1841, 1842 and 1843. But a closer look at the riparian record of the Daoguang period reveals an anomaly; for the two decades from 1821 to 1841 there were no major floods along the Yellow River, and only one serious failure in the entire Yellow River hydraulic system.3 These two decades are striking when compared to the disastrous hydraulic record of the preceding Jiaqing (1796-1820) reign, and mark one of the longest periods of successful *The author would like to thank Jonathan Spence, Beatrice Bartlett, Conrad Totman, Carole Haber and the Late Imperial China readers for their advice and comments. Thanks also to Jane Kate Leonard for her help with maps. Research for this project was supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Committee for Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China and the Council on East Asian Studies of Yale University. 1Hu 1955:505 identifies "excessive bureaucratization" as the basic malaise of the Qing polity. In the Yellow River Conservancy, he argues, this bureaucratization resulted in a bloated, corrupt, inefficient, and self-interested bureaucracy. The consequences were rising costs and a reduced effectiveness which led to the eventual collapse of the system. 2Xiao Yishan 1962:880-92; Jones and Kuhn 1978:107-62; Polachek 1977:pt. 1. Leonard 1988:665-69 presents a more positive assessment of the imperial response to hydraulic problems in this period. 3This was the collapse of the Gaoyan Dike on the eastern edge of Lake Hongze in 1824. Late Imperial China Vol. 12, No. 2 (December 1991): 36-63© by the Society for Qing Studies 36 Hydraulic Evolution37 Yellow River control during the Qing dynasty.4 This unprecedented success at a time when the state was beset by serious challenges on many fronts suggests that the Daoguang reign was a period of greater dynastic vitality than has previously been thought, and raises the question of whether and in what way the problems of the Yellow River conservancy can still contribute to our understanding of the decline of the Qing dynasty. Most historians writing about the Yellow River conservancy have taken a top-down approach, focusing on the impact of political and administrative factors on the operation of the river control system. What has received less attention is the way in which long-term technical and hydraulic developments in the control system affected the river administration and contributed to larger problems confronting the Qing state. The foundations of the Qing Yellow River control system were laid in the late Ming (1368-1644). The system included the river itself and its associated network of smaller rivers and lakes, and the complex of dikes, revetments, diversion canals, dams, flash-lock gates, reservoirs, and spillways constructed to restrain and direct their waters. Over the subsequent two-and-one-half centuries this control system underwent a process of growth and articulation driven primarily by the hydraulic peculiarities of the Yellow River. The result was a hydraulic system that could be successfully maintained only at the cost of an evergreater share of the state's fiscal and administrative resources. The Yellow River's siltation problem lies at the heart of these developments . As the river flows...