Controlling the Dragon

Notes

Notes Abbreviations Full publication information may be found in the Bibliography. DQHDSL Qin ding da Qing huidian shili “GZD” “Gongzhong Dang” HZXZ Hunyuan zhou xu zhi QDHCZ Qingdai hechen zhuan “QDWXDA” “Qingdai Wenxian Dangan” “SLTB” “Shuili Tiben” “SYDFB” “Shangyu Dang Fangben” XFXZ Xiangfu xian Zhi ZXXSJJ Zaixu xingshui jinjian ZXZ Zhongmou xian Zhi Introduction 1. Derk Bodde, Essays on Chinese Civilization, ed. Charles Le Blanc and Dorothy Borei (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 138. 2. Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), 18. Wittfogel’s theory of “oriental despotism” emphasizes the absolute power of the emperor and the pervasive influence of a state bureaucracy, an influence that originates in state control of the hydraulic systems. Wittfogel traced the origins of despotism to a specific variant of “hydro-agriculture,” or irrigation farming, that attempts to utilize scarce water resources in a “dry but potentially fertile area.” The specific requirements for the emergence of a “hydraulic order of life” in any area are (1) an economy above subsistence level, (2) a location beyond the centers of rainfall agriculture, and (3) a society below the level of property-based, industrial civilization (12–19). That description does not accord well with the large defensive system developed along the Yellow River, and Wittfogel noted that “too little or too much water does not necessarily lead to governmental water control; nor does governmental water control necessarily imply despotic methods of statecraft ” (12). Other theorists of imperial power, such as Etienne Balazs and Joseph Needham , offer variant models of the Chinese state that agree with the image of an 161 all-pervasive bureaucracy with much of its influence founded on the control of public works. For a fuller discussion, see Peter Perdue, Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500–1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1987), 1–10. 3. Hu Ch’ang-tu, “The Yellow River Administration in the Ch’ing Dynasty,” Far Eastern Quarterly 14, no. 4 (August 1955): 505, 509. See also Hu Ch’ang-tu, “The Yellow River Administration in the Ch’ing Dynasty” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1954). There was no such entity as the “Yellow River Conservancy .” The interlocking regional engineering bureaucracies were also charged with maintaining the Grand Canal and the other components of the hydraulic system. Moreover, although hydraulic officials did sometimes spend most of their career in river and canal posts, many were shifted in and out of the regular provincial bureaucracy. Additionally, provincial governors and governors-general had significant roles in shaping the agenda of the hydraulic bureaucracy. Hu believed that “excessive bureaucratization” was the primary mechanism of dynastic decline. 4. Susan Mann Jones and Philip A. Kuhn, “Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, pt. 1, Late Ch’ing, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 107–162. 5. Cen Zhongmian, Huang He bianqian shi [A history of the Yellow River’s changes of course] (Beijing: People’s Publishing Co., 1957), 563–572; see also Huang He shuili shi shuyao [An outline history of Yellow River water conservancy ], ed. Shuili Bu, Huang He Shuili Weiyuan Hui (Beijing: Water Conservancy and Electrical Power Publishing Co., 1984), 254–256, 319–321. There are slight discrepancies in the totals given in those two works, with one listing eighteen floods in the Qianlong reign. Nevertheless, the increase in frequency in the Jiaqing reign is clear. Jones and Kuhn, “Dynastic Decline,” 127–128. Although Heshen was deposed at the time of the Qianlong emperor’s death in 1799, many of the men he managed to get appointed were able to continue to serve in high posts in the Jiaqing bureaucracy. 6. Jane Kate Leonard, Controlling from Afar: The Daoguang Emperor’s Management of the Grand Canal Crisis, 1824–1826 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Chinese Studies, 1996). 7. For example, the number of defensive sites on both banks of the Yellow River in Henan climbed from none in the early Qing to fewer than five hundred by the late eighteenth century, to more than two thousand in 1840. The accelerating pace of the construction of new sites was a consequence of the river’s increased activity within the dikes. Most of the recent research on Chinese water conservancy has been on hydraulic issues arising from irrigation farming, a subject generally associated with the Chinese term shuili...