ARTICLE REVIEW

Article Review: “Politics.” in Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China

Article Review: “Politics.” in Saving the World

Précis of the article

Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century ceramic by WilliamT. Rowe is a magnificently detailed investigation of one of the High Qing's most skilled and inventive local administrators. Beginning his authorized vocation as one of the Yongzheng emperor's "new men" and extending to serve as a provincial troubleshooter in the Qianlong reign, Chen's leadership in these crucial years assisted crystallize new ideas and approaches to Qing governance and elite worldview in a time span of sweeping communal and economic change, developed by the financial revolution and the new style of imperial administrative authority that distinuished Manchu rule. Rowe shows that by dint of sheer energy and administrative creativity, Chen discovered new ways to put natural (dili) and human (minli) resources to work to enrich the people's livelihood--the essential first step in conceiving communal steadiness and a more flawless lesson order. It would emerge that Chen's administrative career was guided by what Chang Hao has identified as the "this-worldly Neo-Confucian moral objective" of Qing statecraft considered (1)--a mission that expressed the Mencian assumption that financial well-being, or a "constant livelihood," was a precondition for "a constant heart." (2) This is the portrait of Chen that Rowe has painted.

Qing scholars usually have been cognizant of the importance of facets of Chen Hongmou's assistance to Qing governance, such as food-grain management, learning, and the social and political integration of non-Han topics, as well as of the early nineteenth-century elite esteem for Chen's pragmatic, "no-frills" approach to administrative problem solving and his proficiency to adapt policies and programs to meet altering conditions. But Rowe's mature and comprehensive remedy of Chen's life and work drags the various parts of his vocation together to show the interior reasoning of his worldview and administrative agenda. This holistic approach not only permits the scribe to explore what he sees as three stress in the Chinese elite consciousness--that between pragmatism and moralism, state and society, and the one-by-one and group--but also discloses how the Qing regime worked in perform to orchestrate and simultaneously reply to regionally diverse situation and distinct rates of communal and financial change throughout the empire.

Finally, Rowe's work is a case study of a pivotal instant in time (1725-1775) when one finds moves and adjustments in the solid ruling schemes used to enhance an imperial perfect that was ironically hard-hitting and yet held back in maintaining the restricted and fluid boundaries of state power between the centered bureaucratic state and regionally discrete arenas of communal and financial community. In a period when vintage ways of doing things were giving way to new ones, Chen affirmed the importance of the state's stewardship of the finances and its critical role in recruiting financial forces to latest trend and enrich the people's livelihood (minsheng). In so doing, he assisted to redefine the way that economic connections and financial associations and organisations were appreciated ...