Related Papers
Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies. Volume 1: Contexts
Qin and Han Evidence 12.B Excavated Texts
2020 •
Tsang Wing Ma
Originals and Copies of the Official Documents and the Bureaucratic Politics in the Qin Empire (European Association for the Study of Chinese Manuscripts Conference-2014, Heidelberg, July 11-13, 2014)
Maxim Korolkov
As a theoretical approach to public policy, the bureaucratic politics approach (BPA) emphasizes internal bargaining within the state and argues that policy outcomes result from a game of bargaining within the small, highly placed group of governmental actors. While the best-known BPA argument is that actors pursue policies that benefit the bureaus they represent rather than national or collective interests, bureaucratic politics studies also pay attention to other factors such as the access to information, which is in the focus of this paper. Conventionally described as the cradle of China’s imperial bureaucracy, the Qin Empire also produced the earliest evidence for the day-to-day operation of government, the county administrative archive from Liye. This archive contains documents drafted within and outside of its home Qianling County, both originals and copies. The pattern of archival storage reflects and potentially provides venue for the study of the modes of circulation, accumulation, and access to information in the bureaus of regional and local government. In this paper, I identify tentative criteria for discerning individual handwriting in the archival context for the purpose of classifying documents as “originals” or “copies”, and use some of these to illustrate the ways in which the nodes of official decision-making and control were created in and through the process of production and circulation of written documents.
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 78.2 (2018): 413-478.
I Write Therefore I Am: Scribes, Literacy, and Identity in Early China
Armin Selbitschka
https://hjas.org/ A recent article argued that “texts can be used as tools for enacting identities in social settings” (Reading Research Quarterly 44.4 (2009): 416). Considering the multitude of manuscripts yielded by fourth through first-centuries BCE burials, such a statement seems pertinent for early Chinese society as well. What does it say about the self-concept of an individual when his ability to write and / or read assumed a prominent role in funerary rites? This paper analyzes evidence of literacy that may be found in Chinese textual sources (received and archaeological) and tombs by applying identity concepts developed in anthropology and the social sciences to Chinese funerary data. It not only argues that the actual ability to write is palpable through certain kinds of texts that were associated with writing paraphernalia, but that literacy in particular was a crucial aspect of the self-representation of a particular group of people, namely the shǐ 史 (“scribes”).
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
The Pragmatics of Standardization: Document Standards and their Implementation in Qin Administration (late third century BCE)
2023 •
Thies Staack
With a view to the necessities as well as the possible problems of a document-based administration, this paper approaches the area of conflict between standardization and flexibility in the production of administrative documents in ancient China. Recently published sources from the imperial Qin period (221–207 BCE) have provided the opportunity to compare administrative documents excavated at Liye with standards regulating their production. With the help of two case studies, the paper explores to what extent official document standards were implemented in everyday practice or purposefully neglected in ancient Qianling county. It also discusses which standards were followed more closely than others, and what might be the reasons behind this. Shedding light on the large grey zone between faithful adherence and complete neglect, the paper suggests that officials chose a pragmatic way influenced by both economic considerations informed by the local circ*mstances and the requirements imposed by the central government.
Empire-Building and Market-Making at the Qin Frontier: Imperial Expansion and Economic Change, 221–207 BCE. PhD dissertation, Columbia University
2020 •
Maxim Korolkov
This dissertation explores the relationship between the empire-building and economic change during the formative process of the Qin Empire. It employs transmitted and excavated textual materials as well as archaeological evidence to reconstruct institutions and practices of surplus extraction and economic management and their evolution during the period of Qin’s expansion culminating in the emergence of the first centralized bureaucratic empire in continental East Asia. I argue that the commercial expansion and the formation of markets for land, labor, and commodities during China’s early imperial period (221 BCE – 220 CE) can only be understood by considering their origins in the distributive command economy of the late Warring States and imperial Qin. The study focuses on the southern frontier zone of the empire, which is exceptionally well documented in the official and private documents excavated from the Qin and Han sites along the Middle Yangzi and its tributaries.
Legal Process Unearthed: A New Source of Legal History of Early Imperial China
Maxim Korolkov
A group of Qin documents inscribed on bamboo slips was acquired by the Yuelu Academy on the antique market in Hong Kong in 2007. Four of these manuscripts are criminal case records dated from the final decades before the unification of China by the state of Qin in 221 b.C. These texts shed light not only on the administration of justice on the eve of imperial unification but also on various aspects of social, economic, and cultural history and historical geography. The present article reviews the recently published English translation of the Yuelu case records by Ulrich Lau and Thies Staack and discusses the value of these texts as historical source material.
Early China
Categorizing Laborers: Glimpses of Qin’s Management of Human Resources from an Administrative Document from Liye, Hunan Province
2021 •
Tsang Wing Ma
The excavation of the Qin wooden documents from Well No. 1 at Liye 里耶, Hunan province has significantly reshaped our knowledge of Qin history. This article examines a multi-slip manuscript from Liye on the Qin management of human resources in a newly conquered area, Qianling County. The manuscript is the best example of the multi-layered structure of a Qin administrative document; it also sheds new light on the difficulties the Qin encountered in resource management during the early years of unification. The manuscript shows that the responsible officials in Qianling County had failed to engage tuli 徒隸 (laborer-servants)—a major labor source in the Qin—in agricultural production, which appears to have deviated from the Qin strategy of managing human resources. To minimize the harmfulness that this deviation might cause, the Qin heavily relied upon a system of supervision and punishment. This article offers a contextualized study of the manuscript with an analysis of the related Qin excavated sources. Early China: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/early-china/article/categorizing-laborers-glimpses-of-qin-management-of-human-resources-from-an-administrative-document-from-liye-hunan-province/AE22A9F579DB0BB5732AD4464553CBB2
Preparing the ground: finding minor landscape names in medieval documents
2019 •
Jayne Carroll
Asia Major
Between the State and Their Superiors: The Anxiety of Low-Ranked Scribes in the Qin and Han Bureaucracies
2020 •
Tsang Wing Ma
This paper challenges to some degree the traditional stereotypes surrounding Qin and Han-era official scribes. It explores certain anxieties they encountered in their service to the bureaucratic hierarchy. Han texts have portrayed them as “knife-and-brush officials,” “harsh officials,” and “legal clerks,” but are silent on the realities of a scribe’s life under the unified empire. Incorporating newly unearthed administrative documents, the following study examines the processes undertaken by local scribes in preparing annual account-books to be forwarded to the next bureaucratic level. Given the complexities, tight schedule, and material constraints, to prepare such accounts could be a nightmare, even for these professionals. While struggling with endless paperwork and meager salaries, low-ranked scribes faced pressure from two quarters: the state and their superiors. By examining the legal regulations for monitoring related administrative practices as well as corruption cases pertaining to the forwarding of account-books, this paper shows that the low-ranked scribes were placed in a dilemma: to choose between the state’s regulations and the orders of their often locally-dominant superiors. Institute of History and Philology: https://www2.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/file/4569LeIKiPg.pdf
Bamboo and Silk
Evidence for Qin Law in the Qianling County Archive: A Preliminary Survey (遷陵縣檔案中秦法的證據：初步的研究)
2018 •
Robin Yates
This paper reviews the various types of Qin legislation found in the documents published so far that were excavated from Well no. 1, Liye, Hunan Province. They provide insight into the actual functioning and application of the law in the context of local administration in China’s first imperial dynasty. 本文回顧了已發表的湖南省里耶 1 號井出土文獻中的各類秦法。它們可以讓人們了解在中國第一帝國時期的地方行政管理中，法律實際上是如何運行和應用的。
